[ OUR OPINION ]

Congress should tighten
Pentagon’s purse strings

THE ISSUE Reports from the state auditor and federal officials detail accounting lapses.

IF HAWAII taxpayers are vexed by an incomplete accounting of $2.2 million in special-education assets, they should be appalled by the Pentagon's inability to explain how it spent more than a trillion dollars and lost dozens of airplanes, tanks and missiles.

No other government agency would be allowed to blow off complaints about such unconscionable lack of fiscal responsibility. Congress, regardless of its loathing to appear unpatriotic, should demand that the Department of Defense keep good books.

Reports of the Pentagon's unrestrained spending practices -- paying $640 for a toilet seat or $250 for a hammer that would cost $12 at Home Depot -- have become so common as to render them acceptable inside the Beltway. They should not be, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's campaign to loosen the purse strings and phase out congressional oversight should be rejected.

For seven consecutive years, the Defense Department has failed General Accounting Office audits. The most recent found its inventory system so derelict that the U.S. Army lost track of 56 airplanes, 32 tanks and 36 missile-launch units. At the same time, the department's inspector general found that the Pentagon could not account for more than a trillion dollars it spent. Just before the Iraq war, when chemical and biological warfare suits for soldiers were in short supply, the department was caught selling them on the Internet for pennies on the dollar.

Even Rumsfeld acknowledges that "the financial reporting systems of the Pentagon are in disarray."

Attempts begun in 1989 to integrate the department's 2,200 overlapping fiscal control systems cost taxpayers an additional $20 billion before the initiative was abandoned. Meanwhile, the tab for running these systems continues at $18 billion a year.

The Pentagon is now asking Congress to approve a $400 billion budget plan that would allow Rumsfeld greater authority to spend money as he sees fit, cut Congress out of the oversight loop and release the Pentagon from obeying environmental laws.

House Republicans, who support the bill, claim that reducing paperwork will make the department more accountable, a ludicrous argument at best. Imagine the bellowing in Washington if Medicare officials or the National Park Service were to report that they had lost track of such huge sums of money.

In comparison with the Pentagon's lapses, state auditor Marion Higa's inventory showing that 91 items used for Hawaii public school special education were missing or had incorrect state decals seems insignificant.

Neither is acceptable. Taxpayers deserve full accounting of how their money is spent whether it be in the millions, billions or trillions.

---

BACK TO TOP
|

Water makes Hawaii
safer, not lack of threats

THE ISSUE The federal terrorism alert has been raised to orange, but the state remains at yellow.

AS it has in the past, the Bush administration has raised the nation's color-coded terrorism alert to orange, the second-highest level, even though the FBI stressed that it "possesses no information indicating a specific threat in the United States." And once again, Governor Lingle has kept Hawaii's alert level at mid-range yellow, a notch below orange, stressing that "there have been no specific threats to the state." She made the right decision but for the wrong reason -- or, more likely, gave a confusing explanation.

When the national alert level was raised to orange in early February and again in early March, Hawaii remained at "guarded" blue, two levels below, because, as a Hawaii National Guard spokesman put it, "We did not and do not think we have a credible threat." Neither, of course, did federal officials or most other governors.

"The fact that we didn't raise the alert status is an indication that there is no credible threat," Lingle explained. "There is no doubt that Hawaii is one of the safest places in the nation or the world."

Hawaii raised its level to yellow several weeks later, beefing up security at oil refineries, power plants and other infrastructure sites, "although," Lingle said, "there is still no credible or direct threat to the state of Hawaii." Likewise on the mainland.

Hawaii is indeed one of the safest states, but not because it has received no specific or credible threats. It is because Hawaii is surrounded by water. Unlike any other state, it cannot be reached by highway, the easiest path for transporting tools of terror across state or national boundaries. All entrances to Hawaii are protected by federal agencies -- the Coast Guard at harbors and the Transportation Security Administration at airports -- that must abide by precautionary measures flowing from the national alert level.

That was the explanation given to the Star-Bulletin's editorial board earlier this year by state Adjutant Gen. Robert Lee, and it makes more sense than the "no credible threat" explanation that the governor keeps repeating. It does not mean the state is invulnerable to attack. It does allow the travel industry to explain, in a credible way, that people can feel safer against terrorism in Hawaii than in any other state.