Nearly 70 percent of the Pentagon's 96 major weapons-buying programs were over budget in 2008 for combined cost growth of $296 billion above original estimates, congressional auditors said in an annual report released on Monday.

A total of 75 percent, or 69 programs, reported increases in research and development costs and these were 42 percent above their original estimates in 2008, up from 40 percent above the year before.

Ashton Carter, the Obama administration's choice to become the Pentagon's top arms buyer, told his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday he would go program by program to crack down on cost overruns if confirmed.

I am not a pacifist. I believe in a strong foreign policy and a strong military. But I don't think it takes $1.6 Trillion, 1/4 of which is cost overruns (waste), to have one. That's a little over two "porkulus" packages right there, all going to one industry. And $296 Billion, or a little less than two AIG bailouts (or about 180 times the market capitalization of General Motors) of that was vapor. Non-productivity.

So if we could please get some perspective on "generational theft" when we spend rather paltry sums by comparison on things like unemployment insurance and infrastructure projects to get our country through this major recession.