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Pentagon Announces First-Ever Audit Of The Department Of Defense
"The Defense Department is starting the first agency-wide financial audit in its history," the Pentagon's news service says, announcing that it's undertaking an immense task that has been sought, promised and delayed for years.
Of the tally that is starting this week, chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana W. White said, "It demonstrates our commitment to fiscal responsibility and maximizing the value of every taxpayer dollar that is entrusted to us."
"Beginning in 2018, our audits will occur annually, with reports issued Nov. 15," the Defense Department's comptroller, David L. Norquist, said.
The Defense Department has famously never been audited, despite receiving hundreds of billions of dollars annually and having more than $2.2 trillion in assets.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday December 11 2017, @06:42AM (2 children)
Erf, yes, well... I'm all for government transparency, but I wish these facile examples of waste would just die. They essentially all stem from the same source: Takes some contract for, say, 3 airplanes and 5 replacement toilet seats. Total cost $X billion, with allowed overhead expenses of $Y million. Take a lazy accountant who divides the overhead evenly across all articles in the contract. Voila: You now have some really expensive toilet seats.
There's plenty of waste out there. Tossing out examples like this is counterproductive though: You allow the projects to say "look no expensive toilet seats", and they're off the hook. The fact that they have a staff of 200 when they need a staff of 20, the fact that they've issued cost-plus contracts instead of negotiating fixed-price contracts - that's all too difficult to deal with. But, nope, no toilet seats.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 11 2017, @07:19AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @11:28PM
Parent has the nugget in this (meta)thread.
...and anyone who thinks it was lone nut with a crappy Italian surplus rifle Lee Harvey Oswald [google.com] who murdered JFK is simply naive.
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