[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.

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