For as long as we can remember, Americans have come to accept the fact that the US Department of Defense is incapable of tracking its spending. We recall stories about toilet seats, hammers, and even nails with ridiculous price tags, missing military equipment to the tune of billions of dollars and contractor cost overruns resulting in billions of dollars being overspent. And we’re told over and over again how this spending has to stop. It is a vicious cycle that repeats itself from one administration to the next until we realize that what we are witnessing is the dysfunctional relationship the White House has with the Pentagon.

We wonder at reports when new administration officials come to the helm and tell us without batting an eyelash that the pentagon is missing $2.3 trillion and how they (in this case, freshly appointed Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld) are going to put an end once and for all to “pentagon bureaucracy.” Our hopes again dashed, however, when only days later, after the occurrence of 9/11, our then-President, George W. Bush, declares that he will need another $48 billion to fight the war on terror. The war on pentagon overspending is, once again, left for another day, and the oversight is pushed to the back burner.

But wait, shouldn’t we be elated when not just an administration official, but President Obama himself reports in March of 2009 that he is going to put a stop to overspending on government defense contracts, precipitated by a Government Accountability Office report that 95 major Defense Department weapons contracts were over budget by a total of $295 billion? That’s a far cry from the $2.3 trillion just a few years earlier, right? Oh sure, $295 is nothing to sneeze at, but it is less, and we are now hearing our new President tell us that he is getting tough on government contract defense spending.

Not so fast. Just when the American taxpayers are heaving that sigh of relief, that maybe this time the dysfunctional cycle has been broken and defense contractors are going to be facing some harsh realities because a new sheriff is in town, the proverbial $435 hammer drops with the news late in December, 2009 that President Obama is signing into law new legislation providing another $636.3 billion in taxpayer funds for the U.S. military in fiscal 2010. There’s a new war in Afghanistan to fund and the urgency has again pushed the fight to reduce waste and overspending by the Pentagon to the back burner.

And so far this year, there’s not been much more said about making the defense contractors knock a few hundred bucks off those over-priced toilet seats.