The DOD budget has grown steadily in the past ten years. Coburn has soundly criticized DOD for not producing auditable documents that account for that agencys spending. Yep, you heard it right, the DOD is not auditable. No one knows for sure where the money goes.
As Stephen Daggett from the Congressional Research service noted in an earlier discretionary working group meeting, total Pentagon spending is higher today – in inflation-adjusted (“constant”) dollars than at any time during the last 60 years. This includes the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Defense Department spending during President Regan’s administration.
Not counting the spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the “base” Pentagon budget has increased from $407 billion in 2001 to $553 billion for 2011 in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the newest US defense budget data.
In a depressing and little-noticed report, the Pentagon Inspector General reported the following in its “Summary of DOD Office of the Inspector General Audits of Financial Management.”20
The financial management systems DOD has put in place to control and monitor the money flow don’t facilitate but actually “prevent DOD from collecting and reporting financial information … that is accurate, reliable, and timely.” (page 4)
DOD frequently enters “unsupported” amounts in its books (page 13) and uses those imaginary figures to make the books balance. (page 14) Inventory records are not reviewed and adjusted; unreliable and inaccurate data are used to report inventories, and purchases are made based on those distorted inventory reports. (page 7)
DOD managers do not know how much money is in their accounts at the Treasury, nor when they spend more than Congress appropriates to them. (page 5) Nor does DOD “record, report, collect, and reconcile” funds received from other agencies or the public (page 6), and DOD tracks neither buyer nor seller amounts when conducting transactions with other agencies. (page 12)
“The cost and depreciation of the DOD general property, plant, and equipment are not reliably reported ….the value of DOD property and material in the possession of contractors is not reliably reported.” (pages 8-9)
DOD does not know who owes it money, nor how much. (page 10)
DOD does not accurately estimate or report the cost of cleaning up its facilities, does not track its environmental liabilities, and does not have a complete record of its ranges and operational activities. (page 11)
Sen. Coburn Takes On DOD
