Tom Harkin: “I am proposing a very simple amendment. All it says is the Department of Defense thoroughly test its trailers and the…”

“I am proposing a very simple amendment. All it says is the Department of Defense thoroughly test its trailers and the trucks that pull them before they spend more money to modify them or to buy new ones. I understand there is a rule XVI point of order against the amendment. So I will ask that it be withdrawn. But I wanted to take the time to at least let Senators know about and become aware of a very interesting problem in the Department of Defense which I think is indicative of some larger problems that we have in terms of testing and making sure that our weapons systems actually work before we spend our taxpayers' hard-earned dollars to buy them. For the next several minutes, I would like to tell the story of the Army trailers and why this amendment basically just says we ought to test them to make sure they work before we buy them. You would think this would be common sense. But 6,550 trailers that the Army has purchased for more than $50 million are sitting in storage right now. That is right, 6,550 trailers are now in storage because the Army never bothered to make sure they worked. The fact is that this amendment, which I think is necessary, says a lot about how waste and abuse continues to thrive at the Pentagon.”