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IPFS News Link • Military

GAO: Pentagon’s Decades of Audits Not Accounting for Spending

• http://news.antiwar.com, by Jason Ditz

 The Pentagons Chief Financial Officer, Undersecretary of Defense Robert Hale, today conceded that the Congressionally mandated auditing requirements are "more of a challenge than I expected."

Thats putting it mildly. Congress required full financial accountings of Pentagon spending in the 1990s, and in 2010 ordered the Pentagon to be ready for a "full audit" by 2017. The halfway point to 2017 is here, and the Government Accountability Office says the Pentagon is well short of where it would need to be to meet those goals.

20 solid years of work by military financial managers hasnt amounted to much in the grand scheme of things, and while Undersecretary Hale says he is determined to "eventually" get the military ready for an audit, eventually is starting to add up to an awfully long time.


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