The GAO and Social Security Administration

To GAO for insisting that DoD provide additional testing and a closer examination of the internal bullet blocking plates inside of body armor used by our military in Afghanistan and Iraq. A recent, 104-page GAO report cites considerable deviations in test procedure and unreliable test results as causes for concern and recommends to Congress that additional, independent, external testing of the equipment be performed before releasing the equipment to U.S. military troops. Much of the concern centers around the Army's decision to allow Aberdeen Test Center, which is not an NIJ-certified facility (National Institute of Justice), to be allowed to conduct the repeated First Article Testing (FAT). Body armor failure results reported in repeated testing were inconsistent and varied from a 10% failure rate to 42% percent, which is a sizeable statistical difference in the results (GAO, p. 29). While DoD's arguments supporting their testing and irregular results (p. 98-103) may be accurate, our military and their safety are certainly worth additional testing and ensuring that they have adequate protection. GAO's report,. once again , underscores the key point that oversight is most effective when it is fact based, raises questions and concerns that might have been overlooked, and is primarily focused on improving government programs and operations. The report does just that, and, more importantly, serves as a role model for the rest of the oversight community that suffers, too often, from a lack of professionalism.

JEERS

To the Social Security Administration for a proposal to spend $13 billion dollars on one-time checks of $250 for senior citizens, while freezing levels of Social Security benefits. Our government doesn't have $13 billion; it will, once again, have to be borrowed from the Chinese and paid for by future generations. This past January, Social Security recipients received an 5.8% increase at a time when most Americans received little or nothing. Furthermore, we've seen this pandering ploy before, in May 2009, when "stimulus" checks for $250 were issued to the elderly. The stimulus didn't work then, and it won't now. The elderly would be better served if the government would stop their plan to siphon hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid, than the temporary, feel-good from a $250 check. Sometime, and sometime soon, we have to stop the bailouts, transfer payments, and, as the boys in the band, Dire Straits, best said "money for nothing ". The grim fact is that the nation is broke and we can no longer afford such gimmicks.