“This administration needs to be doing a better job,” said Ranking Member Tom Carper, D-Del., noting efforts in past congresses to pressure Obama. “But we’re not entirely pure as a committee, since many nominations have been held up here for months or more.”
Both the lawmakers and witnesses named inspectors general — acting and permanent — who got in trouble, among them:
Acting Veterans Affairs IG Richard Griffin, for his controversial handling of reports on whistleblower charges of scheduling delays at VA hospitals;
Acting Homeland Security Department IG Charles Edwards, since resigned, for abusive spending on promotional items; and, Commerce Department IG Todd Zinser, who previously was acting and whose resignation has been called for by lawmakers and POGO for alleged retaliation against whistleblowers.
“The disadvantage of being acting IG is you have less credibility because there’s no vetting,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of POGO. “There’s an incentive to curry favor with the agency head to get appointed, and they’re often more lapdog than watchdog.” Some acting IGs, such as Lynne Halbrooks, who recently left the Defense Department’s shop, “try to shield the agency from bad press” and overclassify documents, Brian said, recommending that the Defense Department IG not absorb the functions of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, as some have proposed.
The Department of Defense is the only federal agency unable to get a clean audit opinion. A recent Department of Defense Inspector General (DoD IG) report provides another example of the profound financial management problems at the Pentagon.
The IG found the Army “could not adequately support” $2.8 trillion in adjustments in one quarter and $6.5 trillion for the year (yes, that’s trillion with a “T”). The number is so high because the same financial accounts could be corrected, reclassified, and reconciled multiple times. Each time such an adjustment was made, it was calculated as a separate transaction, and those adjustments added up. In one example that DoD IG spokeswoman Bridget Ann Serchak provided AMI Newsire, unsupported adjustments totaled to $99.8 billion for a $.2 billion balance.
The IG’s findings echo a 2013 Reuters investigation into the Navy by Scot Paltrow, which found that Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) supervisors pressured accountants to plug in false numbers to make the Navy’s totals match the Treasury Department’s accounts. “The accountants continued to seek accurate information to correct the entries” after they met initial deadlines, Reuters reported. “In some instances, they succeeded. In others, they didn’t, and the unresolved numbers stood on the books.”
Jack Armstrong, a former DoD IG official who audited the Army General Fund, told Reuters the Army numbers were likely similarly fudged in this instance. “They don’t know what the heck the balances should be,” he said.
Congress required the entire Pentagon to pass a complete financial audit by September 30, 2017, and both the Democratic and Republican platforms call for auditing the Pentagon. Mike McCord, DoD’s Comptroller, anticipated last winter that “it will take a couple more years.”