The Missing Trillions: Pentagon Fails 6th Annual Audit
The United States Department of Defense, aka the Pentagon, has failed its sixth annual financial audit in a row. With trillions of dollars unaccounted for, the department claims that it is still trustworthy.
Townhall reported on Friday (November 17) that Pentagon failed the annual audit of its $3.8 trillion worth of assets across America and around the world. The essential results of this year’s audit are the same as in 2022; auditors only rated seven of the nearly 30 sub-audits as “clean.”
Responding to Pentagon’s latest failed audit, Republican Congressman from AZ Andy Biggs wrote on Twitter/X that any other organization would face consequences for such a huge amount of vanished money.
Questions about Pentagon’s transparency were raised on social media. One conservative voice rhetorically wrote whether the failed audit had something to do with lack of transparency.
Republican Senator Rand Paul’s reaction to the news was no different; he wrote on Twitter/X that the latest audit failure means a call for accountability & transparency, especially of the Pentagon that has the largest budget of any federal agency.
In May 2021, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators introduced legislation S. 1707 – Audit the Pentagon Act of 2021 – but it died in the Congress and did not receive a vote. Liberal Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders, one of the co-sponsors of the bill, commented at the time of the legislation’s introduction:
“The Pentagon and the military industrial complex have been plagued by a massive amount of waste, fraud and financial mismanagement for decades. That is absolutely unacceptable.”
On June 20 this year, 7 conservative and 3 Democrat congressmen co-sponsored the Audit the Pentagon Act of 2023 (bill S. 2054) into the Congress where its fate remains undecided. According to the website GovTrack.us that watches status of federal legislation and updates the public, this bill has only a 2% chance of getting past committee and a 1% chance of being enacted.
Despite its inability to account for more than half of its budget for the 6th time in six years, Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord reportedly sounds more pleased with this year’s failure than that the previous year. He stated that the Pentagon remains a “trusted institution.” Stars and Stripes cited McCord saying:
“We remain a trusted institution, and we recognize that we have the obligation to do everything to maintain that trust. We have made a lot of progress, and I look forward to our continued improvement.”
Independent commentator Emil Cosman posted a video to share his thoughts on the latest failed audit of the Pentagon and said that it shows how some people who are part of the problem are actually in charge of everything; so they won’t be punished.
Retard joe gave it to China
Sounds like some really SECRET stuff is being developed by our MILITARY . . .
Sounds like giving away our money to terror organizations. Have read that thru South America the United States has funded Hezbulah. If I spelled it right. We also see the Afghanistan disaster left billions of our weapons and vehicles to be used against us. The lavish lifestyles of the elites, politicians, donors, bureaucrats, and others to buy election favors. Not rumor. Fact. Pay people to lie aboutTrump. Push the Russian hoax. Pay the climate gurus to push that lie. Open the borders. Pay the drug cartels. Bail criminals out of jail. While putting non criminals in jail. The list goes on.
It’s no longer a democracy it’s a socialist democratic machine
Retard Dumpster can’t count that it’s been six audits and Joe has only been President for 3 years.
I have oft said that the first place for budget cuts is Defense for the very reason that if you can’t get 10% from our largest discretionary budget item, you won’t get more other places.
But Dempsey’s unprofessional reliance on X as the font of all news, plus some vlogger/author unknown to most with maybe a 5-year career, and other social media hogwash is not professional journalism.
And for Biggs, Sanders, and Rand —- gents, you have been there forever. Fix it. Don’t talk about it, fix it. We can give Biggs a Mulligan, he’s only been there four years and is still mapping out the rest rooms, but the other guys have been there for decades. Rand, well he’s been allowing this for over 12 years and still can’t get it right.
As far as Rand and other noting “transparency,” while this is a really fad word right now, in this case, seems sort of stupid. I mean why would you want to be transparent about your defense spending. Should we send this info to our enemies via federal express instead? Rand, we don’t need transparency — Trump has already told the Russians :>) Of course we need oversight and those folks need to know all, but the rest of us —– I would hope we keep a few military secrets…..what the hell. But sounds cool Rand, keep up the rhetoric and dial down the accomplishments. It’s your style.
This one’s easy. One: audit, find the owners and fire them. Hire people to fix it and fire them if they fail. Then create a Congressional oversight committee and fire them if they can’t hold the audit owners to account. Since this is the largest discretionary budget item, it should be one of the most important Congressional oversights out there. And they should have the clearance to get full transparency. And then, let’s talk about budget reductions