By Tony Capaccio Oct 2, 2014 4:00 AM CT
The Pentagon says most of its primary budget accounts are ready for their first full financial audits, a long-promised project.
“Over 90 percent of our general fund dollars will be under” audit by an independent accounting firm during the fiscal year that began yesterday, Navy Commander William Urban, a Pentagon spokesman, said.
That means the Defense Department will mostly meet a deadline set in 2011 by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to have the most relevant information used to craft annual budgets ready for review. The Pentagon’s goal is for the rest of its funds to be ready in two years, by fiscal 2017.
The department, dependent on different sets of books kept by the military services and scores of specialized agencies that together were authorized to spend more than $581 billion in fiscal 2014, has struggled to meet a 1990 law requiring federal agencies to be capable of passing annual audits.
The Pentagon “should have to meet the same general principles of audit as every American taxpayer” who “must give the IRS numbers you stand behind, have receipts and face immediate financial consequences if you fail to meet the deadline,” said Rafael DeGennaro, director of the “Audit The Pentagon Coalition,” a group that says on its website it has bipartisan backing from lawmakers and advocates including Ralph Nader and Grover Norquist.
Read the entire article by clicking on the following: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-02/pentagon-says-it-s-ready-for-audit-after-years-of-delays.html
As background here is an earlier article from Bloomberg.
Above is from: http://media.bloomberg.com/bb/avfile/rr1EY4_E9Cx4
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