The Scoop: Broken Bookkeeping at the Pentagon

Statement

Broken bookkeeping has plagued the Pentagon for years. It's an important issue. Without sound auditing, over-priced hammers and toilet seats gouge the taxpayers. Multi-million-dollar buildings sit empty in Afghanistan and other places where the U.S. military has a presence. The Defense Department is unable to account for the more than $500 billion it spends every year. Wasteful spending piles up as a result.

The latest debacle involves the Marine Corps. Under deadline pressure, the Marine Corps claimed to have its books in order. It stated its readiness for an audit that would declare its accounting sound. The Defense Department Office of Inspector General is supposed to be an independent watchdog, keeping the military in check. Instead, in this case, it rushed to help and issued an opinion supporting a clean audit for the Marine Corps. Then work papers began to creep out, showing the clean opinion wasn't worth the paper it was written on. The inspector general was forced to withdraw the opinion.

Now, a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report exposes the flimsy basis for the clean bill of health. The report is an instruction manual for how not to jump to bogus conclusions. As hard as the inspector general's office tried, it couldn't produce any paper to support its conclusions. The Defense Department needs to follow every GAO recommendation to the letter. We need to get things back on track and prevent an embarrassing setback like this from ever happening again. The taxpayers deserve to know where their money goes, for defense and for everything else out of the federal government. I outlined my review of the audit failures in a speech on the Senate floor.

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