Pentagon auditor deemed serial failure

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By Shaun Waterman THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Some members of Congress are so disturbed by failures and malfeasance described in a recent government report that they are considering removing the agency that audits hundreds of billions of dollars in Defense Department contracts from Pentagon supervision.

One legislator said he felt physically sickened by the report.

The lawmakers were reacting to findings by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, about the Defense Contract Auditing Agency (DCAA).

The agency, which last year was responsible for ensuring that taxpayers got good value for more than a half-trillion dollars in defense contracts, revised audits to curry favor with contractors, promoted a supervisor responsible for such revisions to a top position and rushed through other audits out of fear that the work would be outsourced if employees took too much time, the GAO said.

"Unbelievable problems at Def Contrctng Agncy [sic]," Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat, wrote on her Twitter account just before a recent hearing on the report. "Top of my head is about to pop off."

"I read a summary of the GAO report last night and quite frankly got sick," said Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, adding that he would not use all his allotted time for questions because he was "a little bit too upset to go where I really want to go."

"Each and every audit that GAO reviewed for this report was out of compliance with auditing standards," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The DCAA "has a unique role," as a steward of taxpayer dollars, and consequently "needs to have independence. It needs to stand up to pressures from both agencies and contractors," he said. "Perhaps it's time for us to consider separating DCAA from the Department of Defense and ... making it an independent auditing agency."

The flaws identified by the GAO "allow contractors to overbill the government in some cases for millions of dollars," said the committees ranking Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

Calling the DCAAs performance "completely unacceptable," she noted that when the agency failed, "the fallout can cascade throughout the system and ultimately shortchange our troops in the field."

Pentagon officials told the hearing that the GAO investigation examined audits conducted years ago and that a series of remedial measures already had been implemented, including a new oversight committee of all the service comptrollers.