Todd M. Siebert: Lawmaker demands Pentagon audit

Monday, 11 July 2016

Lawmaker demands Pentagon audit

Defense hawks routinely claim that even the slightest cuts to the nation’s bloated military budget would make all Americans less safe. But what they often fail to mention is that the Pentagon doesn’t even know where most of its budget gets spent.

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is working to bring attention to the problem of unaccounted spending at the Pentagon. He’s calling for a full audit of the Defense Department’s spending after Comptroller General and Government Accountability Office Chief Gene Dodaro recently told lawmakers the Pentagon can account for “very little” of its $600 billion in annual spending.

That’s despite the Defense Department having spent more than $10 billion in recent years attempting to overhaul its accounting systems.

“This problem has been a festering sore for years. It is adversely affecting every facet of the audit effort. It is driving the audit freight train,” he said.

Grassley added: “How could the mighty Defense Department be buffaloed for so long by something so simple?”

The Defense Department stands out as the single federal agency that has never have earned a clean audit under the Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act of 1990.

That’s despite a seemingly endless stream of reports of wasteful and downright reckless military spending over the years.

Here’s just a small sample:

IG report: Millions of Defense funds spent on gambling, strippers

Don’t let them fool you: Wasteful military spending is alive and well

The Military Will Destroy $1 Billion Worth Of Possibly Usable Ammo

Coburn Report: The Military Is Full Of Wasteful Spending

Pentagon Can’t Account For 8.5 Trillion Taxpayer Dollars

Reports: Afghan quagmire cost nearly $1 trillion with no end in sight

Pentagon spends millions paying pro sports teams to honor soldiers at games

Rand Paul wants conservative voters to remember something

Do we need to ‘rebuild the military?’

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