As the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) makes its way through Congress, with the Senate set to vote on it later today, it’s important for the public to be made aware of its waste. Such examples include the Golden Dome, the F‑35, and the F‑47. Each weapon and program in this legislation should have clear national security objectives, though many of the weapons in this defense authorization fail at this.
Yet critics of the NDAA should note what is not included in its current draft. Congress has put forth no proposals to address the sources of the waste and corruption within the defense industry. One source of this waste is the revolving doors between the Pentagon, defense contractors, and Congress.
These three groups make up what’s known as the “Iron Triangle.” Each has a vested interest in selling expensive and unnecessary weapons to the Pentagon, with defense contractors, for instance, lobbying political candidates and congressional offices to support their costly weapons contracts.
The revolving door between the government and the private defense industry is just one of the Iron Triangle’s features. Those who work on the Hill or within the Pentagon/military can work for defense contractors once their current position ends, with most positions having a one- or two-year “cooling-off” period. It’s a major conflict of interest and perhaps the one most under the public’s nose. Do public employees truly have the public’s and country’s interests at heart when formulating military budgets, or are they helping their future private employers to line their pockets? The fact that this question needs to be asked is itself a problem.
To deal with waste in America’s defense industry, the power of the Iron Triangle must be reined in. Moderating the revolving doors between Congress, defense contractors, and the Pentagon is a pragmatic solution to this complicated problem.
To curb this revolving door, Congress should restrict its staff members and defense officials from working for private defense firms for at least four years. This waiting period would incentivize these workers to find jobs in other industries without conflicts of interest. Should these former staff members be so adamant to work for a private defense contractor, they will still have the chance to do so.
There is also bipartisan desire to deal with this revolving door, with Senator Elizabeth Warren having proposed a four-year cooling-off period for former defense employees, and Senator Rick Scott putting forth a bill to permanently ban former members of Congress from lobbying for private defense firms.
But would Congress actually pass this reform, or any, for that matter? Its members and staff are part of the Iron Triangle after all, making it suspect that such legislation would even get off the committee floor. But they would. This restriction of at least four years doesn’t destroy the Iron Triangle: it moderates it. It’s a compromise between the beneficiaries of the military-industrial complex and defense reformers.
Members of the Iron Triangle will need to compromise with defense reformers because public opinion will increasingly turn against them. Rising costs of living and worsening debt put pressure on policymakers to choose what to cut in federal spending. It’s the classic “guns versus butter” tradeoff. Predictably, voters have little desire to have their Social Security and Medicare cut. This puts military spending in the public’s line of sight, especially when President Trump claims the United States can’t afford other welfare programs while advocating for an historically large defense budget. The more waste, pork-barreling, and corruption that takes place in the country’s defense sector, the more hostile the public will become towards members of the Iron Triangle. This fact leaves policymakers little choice but to compromise on defense reforms.
Moderating the revolving door between Congress, military contractors, and the Pentagon isn’t the end-all, be-all solution to fixing the industry’s waste, but it’s a start. A start for a problem of this magnitude is better than an all-or-nothing approach.
