Political Quotes

“This amendment directs the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, or CAPE, in its next report to Congress to do two things: First, the amendment asks the CAPE to assess whether and to what extent program cost estimators for major defense acquisition programs are, indeed, independent. Second, the amendment asks the CAPE to determine whether a lack of independence affects their ability to generate reliable cost estimates. For 30 years now, DOD officials, analysts, and industry experts have argued that a primary cause of the cost growth in DOD acquisitions is unrealistically low cost estimates. Many of these unrealistic cost estimates are generated by individuals, such as program representatives, who have a stake in the approval of their systems. The newly created CAPE is designed to generate reliable cost estimates, but cost estimates are still generated by contractors and program representatives whose independence is paramount to creating reliable estimates. This amendment seeks to address this problem. I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.”