House Republicans, led by Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, are calling for increased oversight of the Department of Defense after it failed a government audit for the seventh year in a row.
"We request that the U.S. Government Accountability Office continue to support the Committee with our oversight of the Department of Defense's failure to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse," Sessions, chair of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce, wrote Wednesday in a letter to GAO Comptroller General Gene Dodaro. "DOD spending comprises nearly half of the federal government's discretionary spending and its physical assets make up over 70% of the government's physical assets.
"This will allow us to track DOD's progress toward achieving a clean audit opinion as well as progress in key areas that support a clean audit — the status of DOD financial management system modernization efforts and compliance with relevant legislative requirements."
The Pentagon's annual budget is more than $900 billion, which is almost half of all federal spending, the Washington Times reported. The Pentagon has not passed an audit since the agency became legally obligated to carry them out in 2018.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to focus on cutting wasteful government spending in his next term, which starts Jan. 20. He put Tesla and X owner Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of a newly created Department of Government Efficiency tasked with implementing such goals.
"To continue informing this Committee's oversight of DOD financial management, and given GAO's extensive work in this area, we are requesting GAO's ongoing assistance in analyzing the results of DOD's Fiscal Year 2024 audits," Sessions wrote. "This will allow us to track DOD's progress toward achieving a clean audit opinion as well as progress in key areas that support a clean audit — the status of DOD financial management system modernization efforts and compliance with relevant legislative requirements. This analysis and the updated scorecard will provide the Committee with a valuable monitoring tool to effectively inform the DOD oversight work of this Committee."
Mike McCord, the Pentagon's chief financial officer, said the agency has improved and is on track to have a clean audit by fiscal year 2028.
"We do have to keep getting faster and keep getting better," McCord said in a statement, according to the Times. "If you draw a trend line back from when we started, from year one to year seven, I don't think it's going to show you're getting there in time if you don't continue to pick up the pace and that happens with a lot of programs. [There are] learning curves in building airplanes and there needs to be a learning curve here, too."
Sessions wrote that the GAO rates the Pentagon's financial management and business systems modernization efforts as "high risk because of pervasive deficiencies in the department's business processes, internal controls, financial reporting, and financial management systems."
"DOD's capacity for improving its financial management efforts and modernizing its business systems has improved over time and continued improvements can lead to financial or operational outcomes resulting from those efforts," Sessions wrote. "Currently, significant challenges remain, and DOD remains the only major agency that has never been able to achieve a clean audit opinion."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.