Includes “As Congress works to get the federal government’s fiscal house in order, obvious areas of saving precious taxpayer dollars should be in waste, fraud and abuse.  I’ve been on the Defense Department’s case to get its fiscal house in order since the early 1980s when, thanks to a whistleblower, we uncovered spending on $750 toilet seats and $695 ash trays in Air Force planes, and even $435 on ordinary claw hammers (only in Washington is a hammer billed as an “impact device”). It’s an ongoing battle.  Since the discovery of those ridiculous expenses for spare parts, I’ve continued working to bring to light the misguided financial management policies at the Pentagon.  Last fall, I released an in-depth oversight report detailing numerous breakdowns in the auditing process used by the inspector general’s office at the Department of Defense.  In my investigation, I found an antiquated accounting system that is the root cause of much of the fiscal mismanagement at the Defense Department.  This accounting system hinders the ability and willingness of auditors in the inspector general’s office to conduct quality, full-scope contract audits which should connect all the dots between the contract and payments.   The audit is the Inspector General’s primary weapon for “watchdogging” the Pentagon's finances.  Right now it's ineffective, but Inspector General Gordon Heddell has promised "reform and transformation" and creation of a world-class audit operation.  Most recently, I’ve sent a letter with 13 colleagues to encourage the Department of Defense to improve its efforts to identify and eliminate improper payments that cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year.  The department has been grossly underreporting its improper payments.  Without a thorough process to review expenditures and identify the full extent of these improper payments, the department will not be able to identify internal controls aimed at reducing improper payments, better protect the taxpayer, or effectively recover improper payments.  Stay tuned in the coming weeks for an updated report card on a new batch of audit reports (118 audit reports issued by the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General in fiscal 2010) and see if the Pentagon has learned how to establish a process that allows the department to follow the money from contract to payment to make sure taxpayer dollars are being used wisely. …”

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