(Via Zerohedge)
The Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) has reportedly “lost track” of hundreds of millions of dollars it spent, said Ernst & Young, the accounting firm conducting the first-ever Pentagon audit, according to Politico.
E&Y discovered that DLA “failed to properly document more than $800 million in construction projects,” said Politico, which also reported this is just one of the many instances where millions of dollars went missing as the accountability system inside the Pentagon is broken. Worse, according to Politico, the first-ever audit, covering the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2016, signals complete incompetence about how the Pentagon handles its $700 billion annual budget.
While these comments from Ernst & Young are mindnumbing, the Trump administration is set to ask Congress for $716 billion for defense spending for fiscal 2019, a 7% increase over the 2018 Budget. Budget analysts have sounded warnings this would be a significant surge in spending for the Pentagon at a time when the organization can barely keep track of its current expenditures.
“If you can’t follow the money, you aren’t going to be able to do an audit,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and senior member of the Budget and Finance committees, who has suggested to past administrations that hemorrhaging of wasteful spending at the Pentagon must stop.
Army Lt. Gen. Darrell Williams, the agency’s director, wrote in response to Ernst & Young’s bombshell findings that the audit has “provided us with a valuable independent view of our current financial operations.”
“We are committed to resolving the material weaknesses and strengthening internal controls around DLA’s operations,” he said, according to Politico.
The DLA is a $40 billion-a-year logistics agency within the Pentagon with some 25,000 employees and processes about 100,000 orders a day, said Politico.
Read More
