Clumsy

Auditor: U.S. Army Accounts Screwed Up

Financial figures appear to have been made up to cover holes.

The Defense Department’s Inspector General says the U.S. Army’s finances were so out of order in 2015 that it had to make trillions of dollars of accounting adjustments in an attempt to cover up sloppy spending. According to a report released in June, in one quarter alone in 2015, the Army made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments, and $6.5 trillion for the whole year. Yet no receipts or documents were provided to back up the figures, the report said, leaving the impression that the numbers were simply made up. The report focused on the Army’s General Fund, the bigger of its two accounts. The Defense Department has been notorious for accounting problems for decades, and the issue has gotten so out of hand that Congress demanded the Defense Department be prepared for a full audit by Sept. 30, 2017. According to the June report, the inspector general has gotten used to including a disclaimer on all military financial reports: “The basic financial statements may have undetected misstatements that are both material and pervasive.”