Conaway Finally Got His Pentagon Audit and it Failed

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A major initiative of Congressman Mike Conaway’s (R-TX) for years has been to convince or force the U.S. Department of Defense— the Pentagon — to conduct an audit. He wrote a joint letter with Congressman Tim Walz (D-MN) to then-Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter urging the Obama DoD to take action on the matter in 2015. It didn’t.

Conaway, a CPA by trade, has in the past attached legislation to bills to force the Pentagon to conduct an audit. He did so even though there is an existing 1990 law that requires all federal agencies to conduct audits. The DoD was the last department having not accomplished one since the President George H.W. Bush administration signed the law requiring it 28 years ago.

Last year, the Trump administration made auditing the Pentagon a priority and demanded it be accomplished, wrote DoD’s CFO and Comptroller David Norquist upon embarking on the audit in December 2017. https://www.defensenews.com/outlook…

The DoD is a $2.7 trillion (asset) operation with annual revenue of $700 billion. Among the biggest issues the Pentagon audit found included “inventory accuracy,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan told The Defense News. Auditors found assets on the books that simply did not physically exist, Shanahan said. https://www.defensenews.com/pentago…

There were also problems with the Pentagon’s cybersecurity compliance and discipline, Shanahan said.

Needless to say, the audit failed.

Conaway, in a press statement Thursday afternoon, applauded the milestone.

“Given the sheer size of the DoD, many questioned the feasibility of a full audit. I applaud the many men and women whose determination made this accomplishment possible,” Conaway stated.

“Not enough can be said about the magnitude of this accomplishment. The result of the audit was no surprise- the DoD still has a long way to go. However, that does not detract from the significance of this step towards increasing accountability across the DoD. For the first time, we – the American taxpayer – have a clear picture of what processes work, and which ones do not, which will be critical to annual audits moving forward. Now that the DoD has crossed this crucial threshold, I expect the results of each annual audit to improve, ending with a clean audit in the near future.

“This is a tremendous milestone. I look forward to reviewing the full audit report in its entirety, and continuing our work in Congress to support the Department of Defense as it tackles all future audits,” Conaway concluded.

Conaway is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and represents the 11th Congressional District, from Granbury through San Angelo to Midland.