Nothing to see here! No, literally: There's nothing to see here.
One of the Pentagon’s largest agencies can't account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending, a leading accounting firm says in an internal audit obtained by POLITICO that arrives just as President Donald Trump is proposing a boost in the military budget.
Ernst & Young found that the Defense Logistics Agency failed to properly document more than $800 million in construction projects, just one of a series of examples where it lacks a paper trail for millions of dollars in property and equipment. Across the board, its financial management is so weak that its leaders and oversight bodies have no reliable way to track the huge sums it's responsible for, the firm warned in its initial audit of the massive Pentagon purchasing agent.
In addition to that $800 million in not-fully-documented construction spending, another nine-figure sum's worth of other errors were found. And nobody is terribly panicked over this; a news network may launch into a multiweek orgy of rage when a welfare recipient is found who claims he was able to purchase lobster, but for decades the Pentagon has not been expected to keep solid track of ye olde pointy-shooty coin purse. Having the audit at all is considered a victory:
"The initial audit has provided us with a valuable independent view of our current financial operations," Army Lt. Gen. Darrell Williams, the agency's director, wrote in response to Ernst & Young's findings. "We are committed to resolving the material weaknesses and strengthening internal controls around DLA's operations."
The good news is that the problems can be fixed. In order to reconcile, say, that $800 million worth of orders that the Pentagon cannot fully document, it will only cost the American taxpayers a mere, say ... $800 millionish dollars.
[Pentagon budget head David Norquist] said it will cost an estimated $367 million to carry out the audits — including the cost of hiring independent accounting firms like Ernst & Young — and an additional $551 million to go back and fix broken accounting systems that are crucial to better financial management.
In the meantime House Republicans will be hurriedly scribbling their latest plan to take food aid from any toddler who cannot hold down a proper factory job, or whatever the next fetish-of-the-moment will be. They got their trillion-dollar, budget-busting tax cut, so now everyone else, the Pentagon notably and explicitly excepted, will have to pay.
