Political Quotes

“I come to the floor today to commend Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta for personally focusing top-level attention to what has been a festering problem, and I think it is fair for me to say a festering problem for decades. I am talking about the Defense Department's broken accounting system and lack of financial accountability. Secretary Panetta has grabbed the bull by the horns and told the military services to get on the stick and move out smartly. He wants them to fix the problem now, not later. Secretary Panetta's bold initiative is laid out in a Department-wide memorandum dated October 11 this year. In this document, he calls for an all-hands-on-deck priority effort to accelerate plans to create a modern, fully integrated finance and accounting system. Such a system, if it ever comes to be, would be designed to generate reliable, accurate, and complete financial information. Such a system should be capable of producing credible financial statements that can earn clean opinions from independent auditors. If that happens, the Department will achieve what is called full audit readiness. But now I want to warn Secretary Panetta about what has happened to so many well-intentioned Secretaries of Defense. That could be a big ``if.'' Under the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990, all government agencies were supposed to reach full audit readiness 15 years ago. As I understand it, the Defense Department is now the only delinquent agency.…”