Politics
By Adam Andrzejewski for RealClearInvestigations
Topline: On Sept. 10, 2001, then-Protection Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld promised to finish what he referred to as “a matter of life and death” — billions of {dollars} of wasteful spending on the Pentagon, and an unaccounted for $2.3 trillion.
Rumsfeld’s battle was short-lived. By the following day, on 9/11, the Division of Protection had greater issues to fret about than wasteful spending.
So, what grew to become of Rumsfeld’s declaration of monetary battle?
Key details: In a press convention on Sept. 10, Rumsfeld admitted that due to outdated expertise and flawed bookkeeping, Pentagon accountants had misplaced monitor of $2.3 trillion in taxpayer cash. That was virtually 1 / 4 of the USA’ GDP on the time.
The funds had been spent, however nobody might determine what they’d been used for. This might have been an enormous nationwide story, if not for the occasions of the following day.
Rumsfeld likened Pentagon bureaucratic processes to the Soviet Union when it comes to the menace they posed to the U.S. He additionally famous that the DoD employed extra employees than obligatory and spent tens of millions of {dollars} to coach staffers who would solely stick round for a number of years.
Rumsfeld vowed to revolutionize Pentagon accounting, work with Congress to draft new laws, and created the Protection Enterprise Board to advise the DoD on monetary issues.
Background: Jim Minnery of the Protection Finance and Accounting Service instructed CBS Information in 2002 that few Pentagon workers appeared to care about multi-million greenback transactions lacking from inside stability sheets. Officers would merely physician statements to erase the lacking cash, in accordance with Minnery.
“They have to cover it up,” Minnery mentioned. “That’s the place the corruption is available in. They should cowl up the truth that they will’t do the job.
Even the Pentagon’s makes an attempt to repair its accounting ended up losing cash. Rolling Stone reported in 2019 that two totally different Pentagon accounting initiatives had been scrapped. Every value over $1 billion and took over seven years to arrange, but have been by no means even applied.
In 2023, the Pentagon’s accounting methods failed an inside audit for the sixth yr in a row. That prompted Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to introduce the Audit the Pentagon Act of 2023, which might pressure the DoD to forfeit a part of its funds if it couldn’t move one other audit.
Auditors at OpenTheBooks.com discovered that the Pentagon spent greater than $56 billion on payroll in 2022. There have been 24 workers who took residence salaries of at the least $300,000.
Vital quote: “From buying $14,000 toilet seats to losing track of warehouses full of spare parts, the Department of Defense has been plagued by wasteful spending for decades. Every dollar the Pentagon squanders is a dollar not used to support service members, bolster national security or strengthen military readiness,”Grassley mentioned. “The Department of Defense should have to meet the same annual auditing standards as every other agency.”
Abstract: The DoD has had a identified finance difficulty for many years regardless of being one of many authorities’s most costly departments. The concerns Rumsfeld introduced up in 2001 have but to be eradicated.
The #WasteOfTheDay is dropped at you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.
Reprinted with permission from RealClearWire.
