Political Quotes

“I thank you for the recognition. My amendment today reflects the frustration that many in Congress have felt for some time over the Department of Defense's lack of real progress on being able to produce a full accounting of where the money that has been given to them over the years has been spent. In 1990, Congress passed the Chief Financial Officers Act requiring every department and every agency in the Federal Government to produce verifiable financial statements which could be fully audited. To date, each major agency has been able to complete this task except one--the Department of Defense--and Congress has allowed the Department of Defense to continue to not comply with this law for now going on 25 years. It is time for that to end. While the Department of Defense might claim it has taken steps toward completing an audit, purportedly to be accomplished by 2017, Congress has little verifiable proof that this will actually occur. The amendment that I offer today with Barbara Lee of California asks the Department of Defense to rank--in order from most ready to be audited to least ready to be audited--every entity within the Department which is required to provide financial statements for the overall efforts of the departmentwide audit. Congress needs to know which offices within the Department of Defense are making significant strides toward this goal and which offices are not.…”