Some collect stamps. Others collect baseball cards. But when it comes to the military, the Pentagon collects unneeded supplies — and a lot of them. During a time when the military should be cutting back and saving taxpayer dollars, it is instead storing $37.1 billion worth of unnecessary overstock in warehouses across the country.

New findings about the Pentagon's parts and weapons inventories come from preliminary research by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO). Alarmingly, the GAO's preliminary figures show that more than half of the military's $61.8 billion total inventory is unneeded for war reserve or current operating requirements.

What's worse is that the new findings indicate that the problem has grown. In 1993, the GAO found a $36.3 billion inventory of excess stock and stated that progress was being made on the problem. But the GAO's 1996 numbers are $0.8 billion higher.

The 1993 audit found that the Pentagon's excess stuff consumes 130 million cubic feet of space in 205 different warehouses costing taxpayers $94 million per year to store. In storage are supplies of parts determined to be unneeded, unusable, for weapons no longer in use, or in excess of 20 year supplies. Taxpayers are forking over hard-earned cash to store obsolete pump motors, antennas, radio transmitters and clutch assemblies. Incredibly, the 1993 GAO study even found that 10 million cubic feet of such items were in excess of a 100 year supply!

The new GAO investigation was requested by Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA). The study will be completed in February 1997, and disclose what types of waste are in 100 years supply and which overstock items are still being purchased by the military.

Tug-of-war for Tongass ends large-scale logging era

Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) lost a fight to extend a 50-year timber monopoly in Alaska's Tongass National Forest in the Omnibus Parks bill. Under terms of an agreement worked out with the Administration, Louisiana-Pacific (LP) could close its money-losing pulp mill but retain timber it already has under contract to run its sawmills for the next 2 years.