Bid to stop funding for Defense Travel System derailed

An amendment that would have nixed spending on the Defense Department's $474 million electronic travel system was tabled after a spirited debate on the Senate floor over the program's merits and shortcomings.

The amendment's sponsor, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., argued that spending on the Defense Travel System was out of control and the department should switch to a per-transaction payment method, similar to the one used in the General Services Administration's eTravel Service program.

"No private business would have ever spent money for this system," said Coburn, who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security. "I'm happy to drop this issue if somebody would stand up and say there's a limit of what we're going to spend here."

Sens. George Allen, R-Va.; Norm Coleman, R-Minn.; and Carl Levin, D-Mich., disagreed with Coburn's amendment, stating that while DTS has "plenty of bugs," blocking an effort to integrate the department's financial system would not be helpful.

"I don't think we should blow up the effort and go back to ground zero," Levin said. "I admire the senator's goal in trying to come up with a system that is better than the one we have now."

Coburn argued that his amendment would not take the Pentagon back to "ground zero," saying it would leave DTS intact, but alter the payment method to rein in spending on the program.

"This is another win for the military industrial complex and another loss for the taxpayers," said Coburn spokesman, John Hart. "There's no incentive to get these [Defense] programs under control unless the Senate or the House votes to freeze spending on some of these things."

The amendment--which was tabled on a 65-32 vote--would have been attached to the $440 billion Defense spending bill (H.R. 2863), which President Bush has threatened to veto for reasons unrelated to DTS, including a failure to fulfill the Pentagon's budget requests.

Levin said he opposed the amendment with "great reluctance" and he had great admiration for Coburn's effort to hold the Pentagon accountable for its programs. But cutting DTS was "going too far," Levin said, because it countered efforts to integrate the department's thousands of financial management systems.

"We've told the Department of Defense that you've got to get your house in order … so we can tell whether or not your expenditures are authorized," Levin said. "Right now, we've got thousands of systems and thousands of managers."

Coleman said the problems in DTS must be cleaned up and the undersecretary of Defense is committed to working on the problem.

"Now is not the time to pull the plug," Coleman said. "Let us do the oversight … at the end we want to have an end-to-end system."

In a "Dear Colleague" letter sent to members of the Senate on Thursday, Coburn wrote that the money spent on DTS could be used to provide each combat soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan with body armor.

"It has come to my attention that contractors who stand to financially benefit by keeping this flawed and costly system in place have begun contacting Senate offices to oppose my amendment," Coburn wrote.

The DTS contractor, Northrop Grumman Corp., defended its program last year when it was assailed in a report from a government watchdog group. Northrup Grumman claimed that DTS has successfully processed more than 1 million authorizations, including 90,000 last month.

"Halting DTS development would be the wasteful discard of a $400 million investment by taxpayers in an existing, operational, effective system before its benefits have been fully realized," Northrop Grumman officials said in a statement.

Hart said the company's analogy was "deeply flawed" because DTS was not new, has been "extensively test-driven," and has enormous annual maintenance costs.

Northrop Grumman disputed this claim and said DTS will save money on the administration of Defense travel.

"DTS is the only system that can meet the full spectrum of cost, capability, security and savings requirements--as well as the protection of personal information--so important to the Defense Department and its global travelers," company officials stated. "Interrupting development of this important program would cause an enormous disruption, adversely affecting and, in some cases, seriously jeopardizing Defense Department mission requirements."

In a hearing last week, witnesses told a Senate panel that included Coleman, Levin and Coburn that the Pentagon should cut its losses and scrap the program.

Rich Fabbre, DTS' program manager, said he was amazed that Coleman voted to shelve the amendment and he suspected it was as result of "some of the things he heard at the hearing."

"Frankly, we feel a little bit vindicated because there was some pretty nasty stuff being thrown around," Fabbre said. "It was the result of a pretty significant disinformation campaign."