Posted on 12/26/2018 6:05:00 PM PST by bitt
Delinquency is no joke, shames proud military tradition
“Duty, honor, country” is the motto of the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. Contrast that with the Pentagon’s response to its first attempted audit after almost three decades of requests: “We failed the audit, but we never expected to pass it,” said Patrick Shanahan, the current deputy secretary of defense who will assume the title of acting defense secretary starting Jan. 1.
This nonchalant, arrogant dismissal of gross accounting errors and fraud is an embarrassment to American exceptionalism and the proud history of the U.S. armed forces.
Shanahan’s glib response indicates a condescension towards accountability and a tolerance for mediocrity that erodes the nobility of the five service branches. The audit only came after “years of hard-core foot-dragging” and “internal resistance,” according to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
Those of us who respect and seek to conserve fundamental American values, as codified in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution, should be the first ones to call out the Department of Defense when it has strayed from its stated mission: “to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.” Funds allocated from oft-struggling taxpayers and a deficit-ridden federal government must go to that mission and nothing else.
Instead, the progressive magazine The Nation has been the one with the courage to confront the Pentagon and its “massive accounting fraud.” Dave Lindorff—aside from his posturing over climate change, medical care, and education—has written a historic and important article, exposing what he describes as “theft on a grand scale” that too few have been willing to face.
Out of sight, out of mind has for too long been the deference afforded to Pentagon accounting. As noted by Lindorff, the Pentagon is the only federal department that has resisted auditing compliance..
(Excerpt) Read more at m.theepochtimes.com ...
p
Thanks bitt. First audit in 30 years -- it *just happened* to fall during President Trump's first term.
The only useful audit of our military is of its readiness. I don't much care about how much our defense costs.
Not sure what audit is being referred to, but here’s a 2016 DoD OIG report:
https://media.defense.gov/2016/Jul/26/2001714261/-1/-1/1/DODIG-2016-113.pdf
...The Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Financial Management & Comptroller) (OASA[FM&C]) and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Indianapolis (DFAS Indianapolis) did not adequately support $2.8 trillion in third quarter journal voucher (JV) adjustments and $6.5 trillion in yearend JV adjustments made to AGF data during FY 2015 financial statement compilation...
And it helped drive the soviet union into financial ruin.
Nice dog Mad Job.
“.....I don’t much care about how much our defense costs.”
Obviously our Congress doesn’t either.
Oh, don't worry, they will until early 2025.
I thought I read that they have NEVER had a successful audit.
That's a staggering sum of money. It can't be waved away as rounding errors, or typical bureaucratic corruption and waste. There had better be a whole of something amazing we built in exchange for that kind of money.
Every unit I worked in, for 22 years of AF time....knew precisely what they were spending on fuel, supplies, office materials, carpet, etc. But if you went two levels up...none of those dimwits could see or layout the details of all the units under them. I think this is the major problem which cause people to utter audit ‘failure’.
After i retired, for roughly 3 years...I was a GS supervisor for a military unit, and the controller of the unit credit card. I had some audit idiot who called up one day and wanted to do an audit over one single item we’d bought six months prior (less than $50). I had to gather up all the paperwork, the receipt, the forms to explain the three companies we compared prices against, etc....then write a detailed report to explain why there was no corrupt practices involved. I probably wasted at least $150 of my man-hour time to satisfy the audit gal on this one single item.
Much has to do with the tracking of real property assets. This has been grossly mishandled. There are those that could of fixed the problem, but instead have been removed from thier positions. Much has been hidden in military budgets, proper accounting may expose the extent of black program spending.
A few months ago, the story was that this audit was expected to turn up a lot of messed up stuff and be used as a springboard to make things right....
Guaranteed no government agency would pass an honest audit.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.