If we told you that the Pentagon is wasting $100 million, you might think, “Jeez, that's peanuts for the Pentagon.” But, it should send shivers down your spine that this amount was wasted on unused airplanes tickets, many of which were fully refundable first or business class tickets.

Most Americans have the common sense to search the best prices available on Orbitz or Expedia and to seek reimbursement for their ticket when they cancel their trip. But, the Department of Defense's common sense seems to have flown the coop. A new report released by the taxpayer protectors over at the General Accounting Office (GAO) yesterday has found that the Pentagon has thrown $100 million away on partially used, totally unused, and fraudulently purchased airline tickets.

Millions of dollars must be “chump change” to a federal agency that has never passed an agency-wide audit. The Pentagon just hasn't bothered to implement strong oversight and review of its travel voucher system. The Pentagon's ticket reimbursement system can't detect if an airline ticket purchase was authorized, if it was used, or even if the ticket was purchased in the first place.

The GAO says the ticket reimbursement program amounts to an 'honor system,' whereby DOD personnel are expected to report unused tickets to the travel office. When personnel either do not use or only use part of an airline ticket (i.e. flying two stages of a three stage trip), the employee is expected to return the unused portion and the DOD is expected to seek a reimbursement from the airline. Between 2001 and 2002, DOD personnel failed to report 58,000 unused airline tickets with a residual value of more than $21.1 million. Many more partially used tickets also went unreported. In the last six years this total negligence has set taxpayers back by about 100 million buckeroni's.

In fiscal year 2001-2002, the Army, Marine Corps, and Navy filed about 27,000 potentially improper reimbursements totaling more than $8 million. More than half of the cases randomly selected were deemed “improper” and never would have been noticed by the Department of Defense. Examples of fraud include a senior official who received 13 improper payments totaling almost $10,000 but claimed he did not notice them. Another DOD employee purchased more than 70 plane tickets worth over $60,000 and later resold the tickets to friends and family at discounted prices.

How can anyone get away with this? When no one is minding the store, it's easy as pie. Because the Department of Defense does not verify that travel orders are valid before approval and purchase, DOD personnel can easily defraud the government.

Reports dating back to 1984 cited that several federal agencies between 1975 and 1981 had failed to seek reimbursement from Northwest Airlines. Again, the government had purchased millions of dollars worth of airline tickets, didn't use them, and then failed to seek the reimbursements entitled to them by law.

It's time that the Department of Defense apply the same common sense exercised by American families when they travel. We have known about these problems for three decades yet the Pentagon has done very little to fix the problem. During a time of sky-high deficits, taxpayers deserve better.