Pentagon unable to track war spending- Watchdog

4/14/2005 8:47:00 AM GMT

David Walker, Congress's top investigator revealed on Wednesday that the U.S. Defense Department is unable to track the tens of millions of dollars spent in war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Comptroller General David Walker told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee on Wednesday that the department "doesn't have a system to be able to determine with any degree of reliability and specificity how we spent" tens of millions in war-related emergency funds set aside by Congress.

Walker, who heads the Government Accountability Office, Congress's nonpartisan audit and investigative arm, disclosed the accounting gap as part of a broader indictment of Pentagon business practices.

Congress approved $25 billion in extra defense spending for 2005 budget. Lawmakers are expected to approve additional $81 billion more this week outside the normal budget process, including about $75 billion for war-related Defense Department operations.

Walker said that although there was no doubt that appropriated funds were spent, he noted that "trying to figure out what they were spent on is like pulling teeth," referring to an accounting effort he said was under way for Congress.

The Defense Department didn’t comment immediately on the latest finding.

Walker added that the Defense Department, now seeking $419.3 billion for 2006 budget, is wasting billions of dollars a year due to ineffective management of its business operations.

He, moreover, said that while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has shown commitment to business management transformation, "little tangible evidence of actual improvement has been seen in DoD's business operations to date".

Walker suggests that the Defense Department appoints a chief manager, to become the third-ranking official at the Pentagon after the defense secretary and the deputy defense secretary.

But Michael Wynne, the current Pentagon official with responsibility for acquisition, technology and logistics, refused the idea, saying it would add "layers and players to an already burdened organization."

"That is the last thing we need", he told the Subcommittee on Readiness and Management.

"Another layer of management would only foster more delays than ever with new relationships and priorities, potentially hurting our product delivery to the war fighter," he added.

"We are bringing the department well forward in financial transparency, using standards and delegated accountability".