Pork and Procurement

There's been a lot of heady talk in Washington about reforming a military equipment procurement system which everyone -- except certain defense contractors -- admits is broken. But among the most intractable barriers to change is the role pork-barrel politics plays in how weapons programs get approved and funded, as The Washington Post's Dana Milbank points out in today's piece.

The Pentagon may not need a new destroyer, at least not right now, but that destroyer will still be built if it means work for a shipyard in a powerful congressman's home state. Reforming the system isn't fully in the executive branch's power, in other words, as long as the legislative branch is bent on misusing and abusing the power of the purse strings.