Just last week, a curious situation happened at Taxpayers for Common Sense. Our website’s second most visited page was “Why Can’t the Pentagon Pass an Audit.” The subject isn’t surprising; the Pentagon recently announced that it failed its audit (again). What is surprising – we wrote that Wastebasket in May of 2000 – 23 years ago.

This analytical anomaly not only demonstrates the longevity of TCS but also our dedication to important issues like getting Pentagon spending under control. This is the sixth straight year the Pentagon has failed its audit. Before that, their books weren’t even “auditable.” When we wrote the 2000 Wastebasket, the Pentagon budget was $320 billion. This year, it is $816 billion. Increasing taxpayer investment in institutions that fail audits is inherently risky.

Back in 2000, only 11 of 24 big federal agencies couldn’t produce reliable financial statements. Now, the Pentagon stands alone as the only federal department to have never successfully passed an audit. This continued failure flouts a legal requirement dating back to the 1990s that mandates each federal agency pass an audit.

According to the Pentagon’s announcement, seven of 29 audit components received unmodified opinions, indicating they passed. One received a qualified opinion, denoting its financial statements contained errors or omissions, while three are still pending. The remaining 18 components received disclaimers of opinion, implying that auditors either lacked access to necessary information, found the provided information unclear or unreliable, detected material misstatements, or deemed financial records too complex to decipher. In other words, they failed. For the Pentagon to pass its audit, every component must pass.

While Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord asserted that the Pentagon has “made a lot of progress to date,” the number of clean sub-audits was the same as last year. So, when reporters questioned McCord’s statement, he clarified that he meant “progress sort of beneath the surface of a pass-fail for the entire Army.”

In 2020, former Pentagon Comptroller Thomas Harker set a 2027 deadline for the Pentagon to pass an audit, but officials haven’t stood by that. In a press briefing following this year’s failed audit, Deputy Press Secretary for the Pentagon Sabrina Singh dismissed questions about the Pentagon’s timeline for passing an audit as “hypothetical” and argued that she “can’t predict the future.”

Earlier this year, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Representatives Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Michael Burgess (R-TX) introduced the bipartisan Audit the Pentagon Act in their respective chambers. According to the Senate bill, this legislation, which has attracted 11 cosponsors in the Senate and 20 in the House, mandates the Pentagon to pass an audit or forfeit 1 percent of its funding to the Treasury Department to aid in deficit reduction. The House bill proposes a similar forfeiture of 0.5 percent of the budget in the first year and 1 percent in subsequent years. Taxpayers for Common Sense strongly supports these efforts to incentivize the Pentagon to account for its use and management of taxpayer funds properly.

In July, the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs held a hearing on the Pentagon’s repeated failure to pass an audit. Members of both political parties criticized the lack of consequences for these failures and underscored the significance of successful audits for military readiness. Testimonies from Brett Mansfield, Deputy Inspector General at the Pentagon, and Asif Khan from the Government Accountability Office revealed misplaced assets like Black Hawk helicopters.

The hearing also touched on a Pentagon accounting error that overstated the cost of U.S. weapons sent to Ukraine by $6.2 billion and the issue of contractors losing millions in spare parts for the F-35 program. Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Clay Higgins (R-LA) expressed frustration over the Pentagon’s wasteful spending. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) referenced a CBS report on defense contractors’ price gouging, and Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) highlighted the DoD’s excessive spending on items like Viagra, contrasting it with infrastructure needs.

The oversight hearing coincided with the House debate on the $874 billion National Defense Authorization Act for 2024. Then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) sided with fiscal hawks opposing defense spending increases beyond President Biden’s proposed $886 billion military budget. This stance contrasts with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who supports additional defense spending.

Taxpayers for Common Sense has been calling for accountability from the Pentagon on spending for our entire existence, nearly 30 years. With the Pentagon failing its sixth audit in as many years, the growing chorus of calls for imposing some accountability on the Pentagon’s accounting process should continue to grow. Taxpayers for Common Sense remains committed to reinforcing these calls for transparency and accountability.