Editorial: The Pentagon still can't pass a basic audit

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will have no shortage of targets when they burrow into the bureaucracy in an effort to make the federal government more efficient and cost effective. But one quarry stands out: the Pentagon.

Last week, the Department of Defense failed its seventh audit in a row, unable to account for portions of its $824 billion annual budget. The agency has failed every such review since Congress mandated them beginning in 2018. It is the only federal department to achieve that dubious distinction.

Of the 28 entities operating under the Pentagon umbrella, only nine earned a clean audit, according to The Hill. Still, department officials slapped a “glass is half full” spin on the news, pointing out that the most recent results showed improvements over past reviews.

“I do not say we failed, as I said, we have about half clean opinions. We have half that are not clean opinions,” Michael McCord, undersecretary of defense comptroller and chief financial officer, told The Hill. “So if someone had a report card that is half good and half not good, I don’t know that you call the student or the report card a failure.”

Apparently, the nonsensical minimum F movement to dumb down standards has infiltrated the defense department. First of all, nine out of 28 isn’t “about half.” Second, if a student at West Point or Annapolis scored a consistent 50 percent academically, he or she would soon be a washout.

The department insists it is on schedule for full compliance by 2028. But Pentagon officials have been making similar claims — everything will be in order in just a few more years — for decades now.

“The Pentagon’s latest failed audit is a great signal to the incoming administration for where they can start their attempts at slashing government spending,” Lindsay Koshgarian, director of the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Common Dreams. “Instead of gutting veterans’ benefits or the Department of Education as planned, they should start with the one major government agency that has never passed an audit, the Pentagon.”

Defense spending is vital to America’s security and a constitutional imperative. Yet it doesn’t do the nation any good if billions of dollars a year are wasted or unaccounted for — on the contrary, it complicates the Pentagon’s mission and makes it more difficult for the men and women in uniform to protect our shores.

Any comprehensive review of the nation’s fiscal ledger that put the Defense Department in its crosshairs would, in the long run, improve military readiness and make the world a more dangerous place for our enemies.