[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 100 (Thursday, July 7, 2011)] [House] [Pages H4733-H4746] DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2012 Amendment No. 96 Offered by Mr. DeFazio Mr. DeFAZIO. I have an amendment at the desk. The Acting CHAIR. The Clerk will designate the amendment. The text of the amendment is as follows: At the end of the bill (before the short title) insert the following: Sec. __. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to enforce section 376 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006 (Public Law 109-163). The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman from Oregon is recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. DeFAZIO. My colleagues, in 1990 Congress passed a law that required [[Page H4734]] that all Federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, must have auditable financial statements every year. Since that time, the Department of Defense has spent $10 trillion--$10,000 billion--and yet no audit has been conducted. In fact, there are numerous problems with accounting at DOD, and their financial management has been rated as ``high risk'' by the Government Accountability Office. Unfortunately, the Pentagon, being incapable of being audited, sought an exemption from audits. So in 2005, Congress passed a ban on completing an audit. It was contained in section 376 of the 2006 National Defense Authorization Act. In 2009, Congress got tough and they said, ``Look, we've exempted you from audits. But let's have a goal--not a mandate--a goal of you doing an audit by 2017. Yet last September in a hearing Pentagon officials stated that meeting a deadline of 2017 for having their first ever audit of their books, and they will spend $4 trillion between now and 2017 without an audit, they said they would need more money, more money to be auditable. That's chutzpah. That's incredible. So what we're attempting to do here tonight is to say that we're going to suspend the exemption. The DOD, it's time for them to get their books in order. There is nothing more important for our men and women in uniform than to know that every dollar, every precious tax dollar is being spent properly to give them the tools they need to defend our Nation. And the taxpayers of this country, concerned about our massive deficit and the concerns that are being expressed here in these deficit and debt talks downtown, the taxpayers need to know that we're not wasting money in the single largest annual account of the Federal budget which is not audited, the expenditures of the Pentagon. In fiscal year 2010, half of DOD's contract awards were not competed. That's half. In 140 billion of them, there was no competition at all, and in 48 billion, there was one, one competitor. So we have a lot of work to do here. In 2000, the Pentagon Inspector General found that of $7.6 trillion in accounting errors of entries, $2.3 trillion ``were not supported by adequate audit trails or sufficient evidence to determine their validity.'' We don't know where that $2.3 trillion went. Now, come on. It's time to stop treating them with kid gloves. The Pentagon's a tough institution, the toughest Department of Defense in the world. And it's time for them to own up here and audit their books and trace every dollar. It's a new era. So I urge my colleagues to support this by defunding this special exemption. Then the Pentagon will be subject to audit over the next year, which could provide tremendous benefits to our men and women in uniform and certainly tremendous savings for the American taxpayers. I yield back the balance of my time. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman is recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I'm just not sure how this amendment accomplishes what the gentleman says since it prohibits enforcement of a section of a fiscal year 2006 bill, which only applied to that fiscal year. So I'm not opposed to the amendment; I just don't believe it does anything. I yield back the balance of my time. Mr. GARRETT. I move to strike the last word. The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman from New Jersey is recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. GARRETT. I rise today in support of this amendment and one which I have also cosponsored with the gentleman. This amendment, quite honestly, is common sense, in that it simply looks to add accountability in how the Pentagon spends our taxpayers' dollars. Now, the GAO released an independent audit that they performed in March that concluded that the cost of the Pentagon's largest programs has risen by $135 billion--that's over 9 percent--to $1.68 trillion by 2008. And as was pointed out, over half of that, or $70 billion of that, involves overruns. And what they say in their report appeared ``to be indicative of production problems and inefficiencies or flawed initial cost estimates.'' Since then, we have not had a complete audit by the Pentagon, and since then, overruns have only multiplied. Just this past week, earlier in the week, I had the opportunity to serve in the Budget Committee, where we had the CBO come in. And we asked them point blank for some of the information that we would like to have with regard to these audits, that we would like the information from them so they could pinpoint some of the, as we always say on the floor, the waste, fraud, and abuse that goes on. But more specifically, where the inefficiencies are. And the answer we got from them was somewhat telling. They said they cannot supply this Congress with the information that we would like because they do not get the information themselves from the DOD. And that is the problem. {time} 1920 That is the problem. The Department of Defense is consistently overbudget in acquisition and equipment modernization. There are 92 major defense acquisition programs. Seventy-five percent of them are overbudget. Twenty percent of them are overbudget by more than 50 percent. Mr. Chairman, this is something that needs to be addressed. This amendment will once again hold the Pentagon accountable, assuring that the taxpayer dollars are spent prudently, as intended. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. With that, I yield back the balance of my time. The Acting CHAIR. The question is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio). The amendment was agreed to. [...]