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Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am going to support Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. In the process of doing that, I am going to refer generally to some of the things that I spoke about--problems at the Department of Defense--when Mr. Hegseth was in my office for these personal interviews that all nominees tend to do before their consideration on the floor of the Senate.
One of those subjects was my oversight work of the Department of Defense. I have been conducting rigorous oversight of the Defense Department, along with other Federal Departments, since I became a Member of Congress. My oversight work of the Department of Defense has led me to sound the alarm time and again about the lack of internal controls, price gouging, and the mismanagement of the taxpayer dollars.
If confirmed, Pete Hegseth, President Trump's Secretary of Defense nominee, will be the 16th Secretary of Defense to lead the Department during my tenure in this Chamber.
When I met with Mr. Hegseth, I told him what I tell all Cabinet nominees whom I meet with: When asked if you will respond to letters from Members of Congress, instead of saying ``yes,'' you ought to say ``maybe'' so you won't be made a liar later when you don't answer those letters, because, as we all know here in the Senate, there is not a nominee who comes before any committee in the U.S. Senate who doesn't firmly promise to answer all of our letters or come and testify or take our phone calls. So everyone says yes when seeking confirmation, and most don't respond when they get into office.
Mr. Hegseth said yes to the answer to that question in committee. He kind of laughed when I said in my office ``You ought to say `maybe,''' but he said ``I get the message.''
Mr. Hegseth and I also discussed the need for the Department of Defense to pass an independent audit and upgrade outdated financial management systems to make the independent audit being certified a real possibility.
You know, the Department of Defense is the only Agency of the Federal Government that can't get a certified audit, and they have been mandated to have one for more than a decade, maybe even two decades. They have tried to produce it.
The smallest of the military groups--the U.S. Marines--they tried to work with that one first of all to see if they could get a certified audit. They went through that rigamarole, and somehow they did get certified. I asked for the Government Accountability Office to check on the legitimacy of that certification, and the Government Accountability Office said that it was not a legitimate certification. After a couple of speeches on the floor of the U.S. Senate about 8, 10 years ago, we finally got them to admit that it was a hoax that they were saying they were getting a certified audit.
So this has been a big problem for a long period of time, and I hope Mr. Hegseth can get to the bottom of it and get a clean audit because the lack of a clean audit opinion at the Department of Defense presents huge potential for waste, fraud, and abuse in defense spending. When I get to the end of my remarks, I am going to give you a couple of examples.
Mr. Hegseth acknowledged this weakness within the Department of Defense and assured me that he will get the Department on a proper financial footing.
He also committed to ensuring the protections of whistleblowers who speak out against instances of fraud, waste, and abuse that have been unrestrained within the Department. We spoke about that issue because, for every nominee who comes to my office wanting confirmation, I say to them: You know, whether you have a Department of a few hundred or a few thousand or a few 10,000s--and there are some Departments around here that have a few hundred thousand people--big or little, you can't know what is going on in that Department as far as listening to whistleblowers.
I consider whistleblowers to be very dedicated to their jobs and very patriotic people. They just want the government to do what the government is supposed to do under the law or to spend the money the way it is supposed to be spent. So they see something wrong; they come forward. You know, maybe sometimes they accomplish a lot by coming forward, but sometimes they are so frustrated that they come to us Members of the Senate--in my particular case, Chuck Grassley. Of the 35 investigations I have going on somewhere in the executive branch of government, 90 percent of them are instituted by information whistleblowers give me.
So I tell these nominees: You don't know what is going on. You ought to listen to whistleblowers.
It isn't just the case of a nominee listening to a whistleblower; it is a case of the nominee having a culture within their Department that will encourage middle management to listen to whistleblowers. That is particularly a problem in the Defense Department.
We find too many whistleblowers ruining themselves professionally. They are treated like a skunk at a picnic in their Departments. I could tell you a lot of stories where they have been misused just because they came forward with information that the government wasn't following the laws.
I know you can tell from what I just said that I have been a longtime advocate for whistleblowers and continue to work to ensure that they are protected when they rightfully speak out about the wrongdoings within our government.
As you can tell from my conversation with you, my colleagues, I expect Mr. Hegseth to stay true to his word that he is going to listen to whistleblowers and get the financial management system of the Department of Defense turned around.
Finally, we should thank anybody who serves in the military but particularly Mr. Hegseth for his service to our country in the military. All of the brave men and women who have served our Nation in uniform deserve our gratitude and respect.
Now, I told you that I would give you a couple of examples. One of them is financial mismanagement or not following the law.
One is Janet Mello. About 6 months ago, she pleaded guilty in a Texas court--can you believe this?--for stealing $106 million over a period of 5 years as a Defense Department employee.
The problem there is that I am trying to get information from the Defense Department on one of my investigations. How could an employee of the Department of Defense over a period of 5 years get away with $106 million? I read someplace it was $112 million, but whether it was $106 million or $112 million, what difference does it make? It makes a difference if $1 is stolen from the taxpayers. Anyway, if she had stolen $5 million, she would probably still be a free person.
But what is wrong with the financial management system of the Defense Department that they can't keep track of $106 million being stolen? So I am trying to get an answer to that, and finally, today, I got a response on my investigation. Maybe I got it because I talked to Pete Hegseth about it.
Another one is what we call in Washington the JEDI, a program that the Defense Department wanted to establish called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. There were people in the Defense Department who had a conflict of interest because they had a relationship with Amazon. Amazon wanted that contract. They didn't recuse themselves.
This whole Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure and these contracts, there was so much competition among a couple wanting that besides Amazon, that it was given a brandnew start on negotiations, and I don't even know where they are on those negotiations at this point.
But those are two examples of things that have been really wrong with the way the Department of Defense has been run, not just under Biden but under a lot of Presidents, both Republican and Democrat, over a long period of time. And that is why I am going to suggest that the inspector general at the Department of Defense ought to be fired. Hopefully, Mr. Hegseth can straighten that out.
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