| Okay, so unless you're new here, you know that I am something of a broken record about where to start if you are serious about reducing spending: You have to look at the Pentagon first.
I mean, c'mon! They can't even don't even bother to keep track of equipment costs.
When the GAO looked at the Pentagon and their ability to aggregate and cost out the materiel assets of the U.S. Military, The GAO found that the Pentagon failed in the following areas:
(1) maintaining support for the existence, completeness, and cost of recorded assets;
(2) structuring contracts at the level of detail needed to allocate costs to contract deliverables;
(3) providing guidance to help ensure consistency for asset accounting;
(4) implementing monitoring controls to help ensure compliance with department policies;
(5) defining departmentwide cost accounting requirements;
(6) developing departmentwide cost accounting capabilities; and
(7) integrating systems.
The DoD acknowledges that, to date, they haven't provided the department with the capabilities required to identify, aggregate and account for the full cost of materiel, and this makes for an environment that veritably nurtures waste and abuse at least, and since human beings are involved it's a given that fraud comes into play.
The Pentagon admits that additional actions, as well as a sustained management focus across departments are the necessary starting point in repairing the ability to address the true cost of military equipment.
"Until DOD defines its cost accounting requirements and completes the other actions it has taken (e.g., defining data elements in SFIS) to support cost accounting and management," the GAO reported, "DOD is at risk of not meeting its financial management objective to report the full cost of its military equipment. DOD has stated that until these actions are completed it will continue to rely on its military equipment valuation (MEV) methodology to estimate the cost of its military equipment for financial reporting purposes."
Someone tell the Catfood Commission that until the military can at least balance it's freakin' checkbook and make at least an educated guess at what they actually have and what it costs, entitlements are off limits. |
