{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/pentagon-buries-evidence-of-125-billion-in-bureaucratic-waste", "Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste", "2016-12-06", "2016", "2016-12", "Independent", "House", "VT", "Bernard Sanders", "S000033", "www.sanders.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t By:\u00a0 By Craig Whitlock and Bob Woodward \n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tTuesday, December 6, 2016\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\tThe Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125\u00a0billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post.\r\nPentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.\r\nThe\u00a0report, issued in January 2015, identified \u201ca clear path\u201d for the Defense Department to save $125\u00a0billion over five years. The plan would not have required layoffs of civil servants or reductions in military personnel. Instead, it would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology.\r\nThe study was produced last year by the Defense Business Board, a federal advisory panel of corporate executives, and consultants from McKinsey and Company. Based on reams of personnel and cost data, their report revealed for the first time that the Pentagon was spending almost a quarter of its $580\u00a0billion budget on overhead and core business operations such as accounting, human resources, logistics and property management.\r\nContinue reading here.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/pentagon-buries-evidence-of-125-billion-in-bureaucratic-waste"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.5436629764735699, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}