NW Kentucky News

Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) opened a hearing titled “Tracking Progress: Examining the Department of Defense’s Financial Management Practices” in Washington today. The focus was on enhancing financial transparency within the Department of Defense (DOD).

In his opening remarks, Chairman Sessions highlighted the importance of financial transparency to maintain confidence in DOD's ability to protect national interests. He noted, "Financial transparency of the military is critical. To remain confident in DOD’s ability to protect America’s interests at home and abroad we need to be able to properly monitor their financial performance."

Sessions pointed out that for fiscal year 2023, DOD received over $850 billion, which constitutes half of federal discretionary funding. He also mentioned that DOD reported $3.8 trillion in assets during the same period.

Despite previous efforts, including a hearing last year addressing fundamental questions about tax dollar expenditures and asset management, satisfactory answers have yet to be provided. Sessions stated, "DOD failed its six consecutive audit and holds the distinction of being the only federal agency that has never passed a comprehensive audit."

The fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act mandates that DOD achieve a clean audit opinion by December 28, 2028. Although DOD has established priorities and corrective action plans to meet this goal, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found these plans lacking in detail and missing remediation deadlines.

"Clearly, more work is needed for America’s military to achieve true financial accountability," Sessions emphasized.

To address these issues, Sessions announced that together with Ranking Member Mfume and assistance from GAO, they developed a DOD Financial Management Scorecard. This scorecard aims to track progress towards achieving a clean audit opinion.

During the hearing, several key questions were posed: identifying major problem areas preventing progress, understanding how DOD is addressing its financial management shortcomings, learning from each attempted audit, and determining how Congress can ensure DOD is moving in the right direction.

Sessions concluded by introducing witnesses Tom Steffens from the U.S. Department of Defense Comptroller's office; Brett Mansfield from the Office of Inspector General; and Asif Khan from GAO. He expressed hope that their testimony would provide insights into improving oversight of military financial management.

"Hopefully today’s conversation can help answer these questions and provide a good path forward for this Committee’s continued oversight of our military’s financial management," said Sessions before yielding to Ranking Member Mfume.