Republican Senator Chuck Grassley recently sent a letter to Heather Wilson, the secretary of the Air Force, asking why a single squadron at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, spent nearly $56,000 on mugs over the past three years. Apparently, the mugs’ plastic handles frequently break off, and since the company that makes them doesn’t manufacture individual parts, the Air Force often shells out more than $1,200 for each replacement.
The mugs, which are used to reheat coffee and tea on air-refueling tankers, hardly represent the first overspending scandal in the military. In July, The Washington Post reported that, on at least three separate occasions, the Air Force paid roughly $10,000 to replace toilet-seat covers on Vietnam War–era cargo planes.
As comical as these examples might seem, they point…
