THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Because according to this report from McClatchy, the DoD runs its most effective defense against those who want to know where the money went.

The Pentagon’s central payroll and accounting office, which pays out tens of billions of dollars a year to U.S. service members and defense contractors worldwide, likes to boast of a decade worth of clean audits by outside firms hired to check its books.

The Defense Finance and Accounting Service was created in 1991 by Dick Cheney, then the secretary of defense, to help the government’s biggest agency get on top of its spending after President Ronald Reagan had overseen a massive military buildup the previous decade to counter the Soviet Union. Cheney also sought to prevent repeats of the $435 hammers, $37 screws and other embarrassing disclosures of excessive spending.

But more than two decades later – after another big military buildup, this time in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks – a McClatchy investigation has found troubling signs that the system set up to strengthen accountability for Pentagon spending is broken.

Among the signs of dysfunction, according to interviews with key players, internal emails, memos and other documents obtained by McClatchy, are:

– Outside audits by a certified public accounting firm of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service’s books turned out to be shoddy, according to the Pentagon’s own accountants, although that same CPA firm had endorsed the agency’s previous fiscal records for years.

– In reaction to the skeptical evaluations, Pentagon officials pressured their accountants to suppress their findings, then backdated documents in what appears to have been an effort to conceal the critiques.

– The Defense Department’s Office of the Inspector General, which was brought in to watchdog the audit, not only helped squelch the critical work but also allowed the outside firm to be paid despite the serious questions about the quality of its work.

“The unchecked and wasteful spending at the Pentagon has been well-documented, starting when I uncovered $700 toilet seats,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican who has chronicled profligate Pentagon spending for years. “Attempts to steer the ship in the right direction is a massive undertaking that can only be done with a competent inspector general willing to be a junkyard dog and not afraid to knock some heads.”

Jeezus! Even Dick Cheney couldn't contain the beast. But Chuck Grassley should know that any effort to contain spending has to begin with the people he works with in Congress. If they didn't push for useless spending because some would fall in their states/districts a lot of waste could be eliminated.