Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–April 17, 2015. The 2015 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) Annual Report on duplication in government spending found that a provision in the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act offered by Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth (IL-08) will save taxpayers approximately $4.2 billion dollars over 5 years. The Congresswoman’s amendment requires the Department of Defense to establish a joint combat uniform pattern by 2018 so that taxpayer dollars are not wasted developing new and unnecessary camouflage patterns. In recent years, the number of camouflage patterns used by the military ballooned to ten. The GAO report points to the NDAA provision as playing a major role in the Army’s recent decision not to introduce a new family of camouflage uniforms which will lead to the savings. Duckworth introduced the amendment to the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act with former Congressman and Adjutant General of Illinois, William Enyart.
“I’m proud to learn that my amendment is leading to significant saving to taxpayers,” said Duckworth. “By establishing a joint combat uniform across all services, the Department of Defense will realize even greater savings. These are the kinds of common sense reforms we need to stop waste in government spending and effectively allocate taxpayer dollars.”
The Text of the report detailing savings from the amendment is included below.This week, Congresswoman Duckworth took part in an Oversight and Government Reform hearing focused on duplication in the Federal Government, and you can watch her discussion of the amendment here.
Combat Uniforms: In our 2013 annual report, we found that DOD’s fragmented approach could lead to increased risk on the battlefield for military personnel and increased development and acquisition costs. In response, DOD developed and issued guidance on joint criteria to help ensure that future service-specific uniforms will provide equivalent levels of performance and protection. In addition, a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 established as policy that the Secretary of Defense shall eliminate the development and fielding of service-specific combat and camouflage utility uniforms in order to adopt and field common uniforms for specific environments to be used by all members of the armed forces.18 Most recently, the Army chose not to introduce a new family of camouflage uniforms into its inventory, in part, because of this legislation, resulting in a cost avoidance of about $4.2 billion over 5 years.
Source: duckworth.house.gov
