Open letter to the supercommittee (aka the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction)

Dear committee members,

I urge you to cut military spending deeply.

We only need our current budget if we plan more wars like the past decade. It is time for diplomacy.

Some procurement boondoggles identified by the Government Accountability Office include:

• Ballistic missile defense


• The littoral combat ship named the Sea Fighter


• The information grid


• The Navy/Marine Corps intranet


• The MWRAP vehicle

Unworkable or unnecessary systems tend to have something in common: Their costs are often uncontrollable. A 2009 Government Accountability Office study of 96 major defense acquisition programs found that almost two-thirds of them suffered major cost overruns -- 40 percent above contract prices, overall -- with average delays of nearly two years. Those overruns totaled close to $300 billion, about the amount of President Bill Clinton's last full defense budget request a decade ago.

As the late Sen. Everett Dirksen said, "A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you are spending real money."

Sincerely yours,