AUDITING THE PENTAGON AUDITORS
Justin Elliot of Talking Points Memo has a nice pick-up of two reports critical of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, which is supposed to police all dealings between military and industry — or $501 billion worth of government contracts. It’s hard to audit that many contracts, but what the Government Accountability Office and Pentagon Inspector General find most problematic is not that the auditors are overwhelmed, or even incompetent. It’s that the auditors become friends with the military and private contractors, and don’t make serious audits. Pruning the Pentagon budget is one the biggest ways curtail government waste and reduce the national debt. But the DOD bureaucracy still seems far away from internal reform.
