Pentagon Fails 8th Consecutive Audit Days After Bipartisan Vote to Hand It $900 Billion
"Congress cannot continue funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to a completely unaccountable agency while American families can’t afford food or healthcare," said one House Democrat.
Two days after the US Senate voted on a bipartisan basis to authorize just over $900 billion in military spending for the coming fiscal year, the chief recipient of that taxpayer money—the Department of Defense—announced it failed an audit of its books for the eighth consecutive year.
The now-predictable audit result was announced Friday by the Pentagon's Office of Inspector General (OIG) after an examination of the agency's roughly $4.6 trillion in assets. The OIG said it identified 26 "material weaknesses"—major flaws in internal controls over financial reports—in the Pentagon's accounting.
Auditors also uncovered "five instances of noncompliance with laws, regulations, contracts, and grant agreements," OIG said.
The Military Times reported that "among the shortcomings were omissions in the Joint Strike Fighter Program, the Pentagon’s multifaceted effort to develop an affordable strike aircraft for the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, and allied nations."
"Auditors determined the Pentagon failed to report assets in the program’s Global Spares Pool, and did not accurately record the property," the outlet noted.
Jules W. Hurst III, the Pentagon's chief financial officer, said in response to the findings that the department is "committed to resolving its critical issues and achieving an unmodified audit opinion by 2028.
The Pentagon remains the only US federal agency that has yet to pass an independent, department-wide audit, as required by law. But its repeated failures to return a clean audit haven't deterred Congress from adding to its coffers each year.
With the passage of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which President Donald Trump signed into law last week, Congress has backed over $1 trillion in military spending this year.
"Congress cannot continue funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to a completely unaccountable agency while American families can’t afford food or healthcare," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who voted against the NDAA.
