Sen. Byrd scolds Pentagon for
inability to keep track of its spending
By Sandra Jontz,
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON — Like a parent scolding a child who can’t
account for spending his allowance, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., rebuked Pentagon leaders
for failure to adequately keep track of their spending.
Byrd wanted assurances from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that
this year’s request for an extra $2.9 billion for spare parts would, indeed, be spent
on spare parts for the services, and that the money would be traceable and accounted for.
But Rumsfeld could offer the senator no such assurances.
“Our reporting systems are in disarray,” Rumsfeld said.
He has set up a “team of people looking at the financial
systems” and trying to find a way toward better bookkeeping, said Rumsfeld, who was
before the Senate Armed Services Committee to testify about the Pentagon’s strategic
planning reviews when Byrd deviated a bit from the agenda.
The substandard way the Pentagon keeps its financial records has led
to an “erosion of confidence in the appropriations committee,” said Byrd,
chairman of the powerful committee. “I want to be responsible to my constituents and
I want to hold the [Defense] Department responsible.”
Rumsfeld apparently placated the senator enough when he said: “I
can assure you in terms of administration that I will do everything humanly possible to
instruct where the funds should be spent.”
Byrd’s lecture came following a report by the General Accounting
Office, the agency that provides congressional oversight on the federal government, on a
recently completed study on a 1999 request by the Pentagon for $1.1 billion for spare
parts.
The GAO reported it could trace 8 percent directly to the purchase of
spare parts, Byrd said. The U.S. Navy could provide documentation that the 8 percent
bought spare parts, while the remaining 92 percent was deposited into an operating and
maintenance fund, Byrd said.
Of that 92 percent, Defense officials could not provide the GAO
documentation to prove the funding bought spare parts alone.
“I find it shocking that the Pentagon would request funds for an
urgent need and then couldn’t show how the funds were spent,” Byrd told
Rumsfeld, recognizing the secretary was not in office at that time.
No one insinuated the money was spent on something other than spare parts, but
what gave Byrd heartburn was that no one could prove that it did.
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