Pentagon fails audit. For the fifth time straight.
The world’s largest office building, Four Walls and a Spare, has failed its latest financial audit. And the four before that. Well, all of them.
“I would not say that we flunked,” said DoD Comptroller Mike McCord, although his office did note that the Pentagon only managed to account for 39 percent of its $3.5 trillion in assets.
I’m not that strong in accounting (wife has a degree, so she explains the hard bits) but she says failing one is a big deal. Five – “would not say we flunked”? Anyone else would.
After all, the U.S. military has the distinction of being the only U.S. government agency to have never passed a comprehensive audit.
But what did raise some eyebrows was the fact that DoD made almost no progress in this year’s bookkeeping: Of the 27 areas investigated, only seven earned a clean bill of financial health, which McCord described as “basically the same picture as last year.”
The Pentagon’s most famous recent boondoggle is the F-35 program, which has gone over its original budget by $165 billion to date. But examples of overruns abound: As Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Jack Reed (D-RI) wrote in 2020, the lead vessel for every one of the Navy’s last eight combatant ships came in at least 10 percent over budget, leading to more than $8 billion in additional costs.
And another major overrun is poised to happen soon, according to a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office.
The Navy plans to expand its ship production in an effort to maintain an edge over China, with a particular focus on a new attack submarine and destroyer ship. The Pentagon has proposed three versions of this plan at an average cost of $27 billion per year between 2023 and 2052, a 10 percent jump from current annual shipbuilding costs.
But the CBO says this is a big underestimate. The independent agency’s math says the average annual cost of this shipbuilding initiative will be over $31 billion, meaning that the Navy is underestimating costs by $120 billion over the program’s life.
Per Comptroller McCord, the DoD hopes to finally pass an audit by 2027, a mere 14 years after every other agency in the U.S. government blew past that milestone.
If it makes anyone feel better, the Pentagon anticipates a TRILLION dollar budget in 2027, a year before they can find out where all the money and stuff is.
Category: Big Pentagon, Government Incompetence
If the pentagon ever passes an audit, half the flag rank folks would get canned.
Intriguing idea. If the main focus or condition for retention of said flag rank was passing an audit it just might have some seriously good results. Especially now in the era of woke flags.
And the sad part is, no one gets fired, budgets don’t get reduced, nothing gets shut down, there are no negative consequences over this “not a failure”.
On the other hand, in the civilian world……….
Reward, 1 billion dollars.
Let Snuffy try to turn in 39% of his kit to CIF when he is ETSing and see how that goes….
The problem with a lot of those overrun costs is that the Gov decides they want to keep adding things to the systems though. Thus costs will go up. That is not always the case, but when it isn’t, DCAA has gotten into the act frequently, and hammered the contractors for trying to bilk the Gov.
This was not always the case. Back when the AAF was looking for a heavy bomber, the B17, they told Boeing what they wanted, and said they would start paying Boeing when they got what they wanted and not before. The first 12 prototypes were not up to AAF requirements and specs, so Boeing never got paid for them.
It’s call Requirements Creep and has killed many a program.
God forbid you should clear housing with a spec of dirt in your refrigerator gasket or an odd smell in your quarters! Can’t start that housing allowance until you fix those major discrepancies!
“new attack submarine and destroyer ship”
Please tell me those are two separate things. Otherwise I’d say that the Navy did not learn from the F-35 conceptual mess.
One would think their ship building goals / plan would be listed as MULTIPLES of each instead of a single example.
The Navy has always been weird that way. Who else would build a ship that is designed to sink?
Think Ed explained it to me that every airplane can be ome a submarine… once. I suspect the same can be said of destroyers.
Or as my late Air Assault brother used to say, “Anything’s air-droppable…once!”☝️
A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money. One would think that not being able to account for nearly $2 trillion in assets would be a big deal to someone, you know, someone like We, The People? I may not know exactly how much spare change is in my old school milk bottles, but I know where the milk bottles are.
Maybe things have changed in the decades since I last went thru an IG Inspection/Audit, but if IIRC, they were brutal and we had to account for everything that we were supposed to have.
Hell, I got hammered on a maintenance audit not too long ago. And, mind you, all my shit was accounted for and either in working order or out for repairs on documented work orders. Apparently, some of the maintenance paperwork wasn’t up to snuff and they REALLY didn’t like our safety paperwork even though it was based off of a template used in our battalion for the better part of a decade with no previous deficiencies noted. Yet these clowns can fail an audit where they can’t account for 61% of their assets with no consequences? Fuck those guys.
“we had to account for everything that we were supposed to have.”
LOL
Yeah, but you didn’t actually have to have it the rest of the year 😉 . After the inspection that particular piece of gear was returned to its permanent residence in another unit, with the gratitude of the inspected unit and promises of reciprocal aid when necessary. Serial numbered items are, of course, another story; a bit more creativity is required.
Or at 39% you almost failed at failure.
The Penta-goinggoinggone is the Sam Bankman-Fried of government agencies.
Good thing the fucking ‘troops’ are well taking care of.
Meanwhile: 3/6 had the entire leadership get shitcanned over losing 2 rifles, on base. Lose visibility of 2.3 TRILLION in assets….and no one bats an eye.
Hey, in fucking up as in so many other things – go big or go home.
It’s like that Private who pulls off some outlandish shit and ends up with a slap on the wrist due to the epic-ness of the act.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that they can now actually have an audit. some of us seasoned citizens can remember when all government accounting systems, not just the Pentagon, were so screwed up that an audit was impossible. Who knows, another century or so and the Pentagon may actually pass an audit.
Maybe they should check out that “Diversity Training” account.
Eisenhower was right. Beware the MIC, everything for everybody at twice the price.