House Republicans call for a ‘briefing’ on the DoD’s latest failed audit
The bloated agency is 0 for 5, but in the words of Michael McCord, the department’s own financial executive, “I would not say that we’ve flunked.” For context, the pass rate was a mere 39%, after a 28-year preparatory period; what’s he using, common core math?
Clearly this guy is unqualified to run the corner lemonade stand, let alone an agency with a nearly $2 trillion annual budget.
This past November, the Department of Defense announced that it had failed its fifth consecutive audit… of the five audits the agency has ever undergone. (In fact, it is the only federal agency with such an abysmal record). Now, despite a 1990 requirement for financial transparency, the DoD had a nearly three-decade grace period, and didn’t produce audit results until 2018; contrary to what Mr. McCord thinks, 39% is not a passing grade.
Now, House Republicans are poking around. Three days ago, Rep. James Comer and Rep. Pete Sessions sent a letter to the DoD’s Lloyd Austin regarding the messy finances. Read below:
The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating the Department of Defense’s (DOD) failure to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. In November 2022, DOD failed its fifth consecutive audit, unable to account for sixty-one percent of its $3.5 trillion in assets. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) also recently reported that DOD continues to fail to accurately account for hundreds of billions of dollars of government furnished property in the hands of contractors. DOD’s inability to adequately track assets risks our military readiness and represents a flagrant disregard for taxpayer funds, even as it receives nearly a trillion dollars annually.
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DOD’s lax financial management and inability to adequately track weapons, equipment and other defense articles have raised serious concerns about DOD’s stewardship of taxpayer dollars, especially as DOD’s budget approaches thirteen figures.
Comer and Sessions requested a briefing on the matter, imposing a deadline of March 13th; yet if we can take any cues from the established precedent (28 years), congressional timelines are just as “lax” as the DoD’s “financial [mis]management”.
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