Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor to raise questions about whether Mr. Lynn ought to be Deputy Secretary of Defense. I do it with the normal courtesy, that a President ought to be able to name people to his team, and I do it based upon two questions: One, the use of the waiver for him to be in this position contrary to the Executive order of President Obama; and, secondly, to raise questions about his activity as chief financial officer in the second Clinton administration, and now coming to be Deputy Secretary of Defense. I will try to lay this out as best I can with documentation.
I will not be able nor do I need to document the first consideration on the waiver. I wanted to express views on it.
I thought I had seen the last of Mr. Lynn when President George W. Bush first took office. I was dead wrong. So I had to send my staff out to where the Senate buries old skeletons. It is the Records Center out in Maryland, the scenic countryside about 20 miles from the Capitol. There I had my staff dig up the remains of what came to be known, and what I came to know about Mr. Lynn's activities as chief financial officer about 10 years ago.
I would give a little bit of word of advice to my colleagues, archival of your materials. I found that political nominees, good and bad, come back like Australian boomerangs. Some take longer than others to return, but eventually you will see them again.
Mr. Lynn is currently employed as senior vice president, government operations, of a major defense contractor, Raytheon. Until June 2008, Mr. Lynn was registered as Raytheon's principal lobbyist to the Department of Defense.
I have serious questions about the nomination. My first area of concern is that Mr. Lynn does not appear to meet President Obama's strict new ethical standards for executive branch appointees. Those standards were laid down in an Executive order of January 21, 2009.
It is important for me to say what ethics means to me. Everyone has a different idea as to what ethics represents. This is a complicated issue, and I don't want there to be any confusion about this word or principle. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines the word ``ethics,'' one, as the discipline dealing with what is good and bad, with moral duty and obligation. This definition is very clear, but I want to go a step further to say that, to me, ethics are very uncomplicated principles of life. Simply put, when faced with tough choices or decisions, we must always do what is true and correct.
Throughout the Presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama repeatedly promised to close the revolving door and change the political culture in Washington. This was one of his top priorities. Consistent with those promises, within 24 hours of being sworn in, he signed the Executive order that set new ethical standards in stone. Under the ``revolving door ban'' section of those rules, Mr. Lynn should have been barred from serving as Deputy Secretary of Defense until July 2011. I understand Mr. Lynn has been given a special order by the administration to further the public interest.
According to a letter I have received from OMB Director Peter Orszag of February 3, 2009--and I have it here if anybody is interested in reading it. Senator Levin has already had this letter printed in the Record.
According to this letter from OMB Director Peter Orszag of February 3, 2009, Mr. Lynn's waiver was based on ``exigent circumstances relating to national security.''
Director Orszag stated:
Mr. Lynn is uniquely qualified for this position and is urgently needed to serve on the President's national security team.
Mr. Orszag was responding to my letter of January 29, 2009, asking for the justification of the waiver.
I ask unanimous consent to have that letter printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record
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Mr. GRASSLEY. I also understand that President Obama's picks for these key positions should be respected. I said that about President Bush. I have to say it about President Obama. They were elected. They have a certain respect of the people, and that respect should not be questioned by the Senate except under extraordinary circumstances. I think these are extraordinary circumstances, and I am bringing it up.
Mr. Lynn has informed me that he would be divesting his financial stakes in Raytheon in the next 90 days. He also said he would not engage in any Raytheon-related decisions for 1 year at DOD unless he receives a special waiver.
Regrettably, for Mr. Lynn and for American taxpayers, getting rid of conflicts of interest is not as easy as it might sound. The Raytheon Corporation has hundreds of potential contracts and programs with the Department of Defense. As such, the Office of Government Ethics will have to set up a full-time department just to handle Mr. Lynn's conflict-of-interest Raytheon waivers.
On the one hand, I believe the best leaders lead by example. So mean what you say. For that reason, I challenge Mr. Lynn to take control of this ethical debate and demonstrate true leadership on this issue by sticking to the principles set forth by President Obama's Executive order on ethics commitments by executive branch personnel. Special waivers and exemptions undermine the basic principle of good government.
Changing the rules as you go along tends to foster a basic sense of distrust of the Government of all Americans. We all know that is a problem. We have to be cautious to make sure we don't make the situation worse. Why make rules if you know you are going to break them? How can gutting the ethical heart of the new ethics rule be in the public interest when those very same rules were created in the first place in the public interest?
Even the best qualified nominees with the highest recommendation should recognize when serving in his or her post would not be in the public interest. I believe the American people expect nominees to be true and honest. Given his chosen career path, Mr. Lynn should know he does not comply with the spirit or intent of the Executive order on ethics.
If he is seriously devoted to serving his country and this President, Mr. Lynn should consider withdrawing his nomination and ask to be reconsidered when he is within the ethics ``revolving door'' principles laid down by my President, Mr. Obama. Then he would come back in 2 years to seek such appointment. This country will always need good leaders who lead by example. By doing this, he would set the standard of excellence for all other nominees to follow. It would restore integrity and credibility to President Obama's new ethics rules. As it stands now, unfortunately, the Lynn nomination is rolling down a very low road at high speed. By setting the new rules aside for the first top-level appointee to come down the pike, President Obama and his administration appear to embrace the very same culture President Obama promised to change.
None of us knows for sure whether Mr. Lynn's nomination is truly in the public interest. We can only hope it is. In time, we will find out.
What is going to take me longest to explain is documentation of some activity of Mr. Lynn when he was Chief Financial Officer and how that fits into some questions I have about the position to which he was nominated.
My second area of concern pertains to Mr. Lynn's financial management record at the Pentagon. Mr. Lynn served as Chief Financial Officer at the Department of Defense from November 1997 through 2000. I first came to know Mr. Lynn in 1998, after he was appointed to the position. Between June 1997 and July 1998--1 month, approximately--I conducted an in-depth investigation of internal financial controls at the Department of Defense. I was testing basically internal controls within the Department. I reviewed about 200 financial transactions from Pentagon offices where the fraud had occurred. We examined purchase orders, contracts, invoices, delivery verifications or receipts, and, finally, we examined final payments. We even checked to see if remit addresses were correct. In short, we looked at the whole ball of wax.
The results of this investigation were presented in a report in September 1998. This is a report my staff and other people put together. The report concluded, in September 1998, involving the Chief Financial Officer and/or things under his command or jurisdiction:
Internal controls at the Department of Defense were weak or nonexistent.
The Government Accountability Office, then called the General Accounting Office, concurred with my assessment.
Our investigations found that not one of the accounts payable files examined was 100 percent up to snuff. I was alarmed to find they all had either minor or major accounting deficiencies. If the Department of Defense had followed standard accounting practices, none of the bills should have been paid. Unfortunately, all went out the payment door.
The most glaring and persistent shortcoming observed was the near total absence of valid receiving reports in the accounts examined at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Center in Denver, CO. A receiving report is one of the most important internal control devices. They provide written verification that the goods and services billed on an invoice were received and matched with what was ordered. In all the files examined, we found only 6 out of 200 genuine receiving reports, or what they call DD-250 forms. The rest of the files contained none. Of the six receiving reports found, all were either invalid or incorrect.
We also noticed gaping holes in another key control mechanism, remit addresses. A remit address is important because it is at the end of the money trail, where the money goes. The review found zero control over remit addresses. A total of 286 technicians in the Dallas center had authority to alter remit addresses. This was a violation of another basic internal control principle--separation of duties. A person responsible for paying bills should never be allowed to change a remit address.
On September 23, 1998, I met with Mr. Lynn to discuss the findings of my investigation. I provided him with a draft of the report. I asked him to review it and provide comment. In his response, dated 5 days later, September 28, 1998, Mr. Lynn did not challenge the findings in this report. So we have this report I have been referring to, and I asked Mr. Lynn for comment on that report. I have his letter here not challenging the findings.
I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record
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Mr. GRASSLEY. In this letter, Mr. Lynn appeared to agree with all of my findings and recommendations 100 percent. That is a conclusion I make. The letter will be in the Record, so Members can read it for themselves. He said
that he was ``very troubled'' by every one of the control weaknesses cited in the report.
Mr. Lynn further stated:
There are unacceptable weaknesses in our internal control programs.
He promised me he would be taking aggressive corrective action to improve and tighten controls. He concluded by saying:
I want you to know that I place the highest priority on ensuring that we have the best possible protections against fraud and wrongful payments.
I also shared my concerns with Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen in a letter dated October 5, 1998. In his response on November 16, 1998--and I have that response from Secretary Cohen here--he offered identical assurances.
I ask unanimous consent to have that letter printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD
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Mr. GRASSLEY. While Secretary Cohen and Chief Financial Officer Lynn, the nominee now under consideration, both assured me over and over that they were taking steps to tighten internal controls--I am shocked to say this--they were already quietly moving in the opposite direction. They were busy pushing other policies to weaken and undermine internal financial controls.
So I want to get into that. In 1998, when Mr. Lynn was chief financial officer, something we call pay-and-chase was the Pentagon lingo used to describe the Department of Defense vendor paying process. With pay-and-chase, the Pentagon paid bills under $2,500 first, and then worried about chasing down receipts later. You get it--pay-and-chase: pay without worrying about what you are buying or the invoice and then, after you pay, go out and find some justification for the payment.
Ever wonder why there is waste in the Defense Department? Sometimes receipts were found under pay-and-chase, sometimes not. Nobody seems to care either way. This is how the Department of Defense ended up with not $2,500 here and there but with billions of dollars in what they refer to as unmatched disbursements--another big control problem with which chief financial officer Bill Lynn was thoroughly familiar.
Pay-and-chase accurately characterized the core DFAS problem I witnessed during my review of internal controls from 1997 through 1998. I saw pay-and-chase up close and personal. Pay-and-chase was not an official policy; it was an unofficial policy. It was actively practiced but not authorized by any Government regulation or laws.
As I understand it, pay-and-chase was supposed to end in October 1997
when the Department of Defense general counsel determined it was illegal. But it did not stop. Secretary Cohen wanted to, instead, legalize pay-and-chase and make it the law of the land.
On February 2, 1998, when Mr. Lynn was chief financial officer, Secretary Cohen asked the Senate for legal authority to pay bills without receipt with no dollar limit. Now, that is pretty high up in the Department that you are deciding that we ought to have a policy to pay bills without receipts, and to do it not with a $2,500 limit but with no dollar limit. This proposal was embodied in section 401 of the Defense Reform Initiative. It was touted--can you believe it--as a measure to ``streamline'' the DOD payment process.
Fortunately, the Congress rejected this absurd and misguided legislative proposal. But you know what the thinking was at the highest levels of the Defense Department. So I discussed Secretary Cohen's pay-and-chase proposal in great detail in a speech on the floor of this body on May 5, 1998. You will find that on pages S4247 through S4250. I placed, at that time, Secretary Cohen's request in the Record.
So what was Mr. Lynn's position on section 401 of Secretary Cohen's Defense Reform Initiative? I asked him this question on February 5, 2009. This is what he said: He could not ``recall'' taking a position on it but agreed it was wrong ``to pay bills without a receipt.''
This seems like a real cop-out. I responded this way:
In February 1998, you had been [chief financial officer] for several months. This issue fell directly under your purview. How could you possibly avoid taking a position on an issue the Secretary of Defense was urging the Senate to adopt? As the Chief DOD Lobbyist for Raytheon, you say it was wrong. As the DOD [chief financial officer] back in 1998, why didn't you know it was wrong and speak up about it [at that time]?
My records appear to indicate that pay-and-chase continued as the unofficial policy through 1998 and eventually evolved into another more troublesome policy known as ``straight pay.'' This policy was even more dangerous for the taxpayers. The straight pay policy had much higher dollar thresholds than the old pay-and-chase plan. Believe it or not, it was a whopping half million dollars.
Straight pay was Mr. Bill Lynn's baby. This policy was personally approved by Mr. Lynn in a memorandum on December 17, 1998, and reauthorized in another memo on March 9, 1999, and possibly again later. This is that document:
Memorandum for Director, Defense Finance and Accounting Service
Subject: Prevalidation Threshold
In a memorandum dated December 17, 1998, I authorized a temporary $500,000 threshold on new contracts paid by the Mechanization of Contract Administration Services (MOCAS) system. This temporary authorization is scheduled to expire on March 22, 1999. However, while the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Columbus Center has made significant improvements in the backlog of payments, we are not at the point where we can lower the threshold to $2,500. Therefore, the temporary threshold of $500,000 is extended for another 90 days for Columbus MOCAS payments only.
I request you continue to provide me with a monthly report showing progress in resolving the current prevalidation process delays. The monthly report should include your plan to lower the threshold at the appropriate pace to reach the goal of total prevalidation by July 2000. As we improve our systems capabilities, we will continue to aggressively reduce the threshold until all payments are prevalidated.
WILLIAM J. LYNN.
On January 19, 1999, I addressed a letter to Mr. Lynn expressing grave concern about straight pay and requesting verification of certain facts surrounding this policy. The facts in question were provided to me anonymously by a DFAS employee. I wanted Mr. Lynn to check out all of this for me.
Prior to the implementation of straight pay, the DFAS center in Colombia, OH, had a prevalidation policy that required that all disbursements over $2,500 be matched with obligations or contracts prior to payment, which is the way it ought to be--well, no; it ought to be for every dollar, but at least over $2,500 it had to be matched. When an invoice was submitted to the center for payment, a DFAS technician searched the database for supporting obligations and receipts.
If supporting documentation could not be found, a red warning flag was supposedly run up the pole. Accounting due diligence was needed to confirm if this particular invoice was valid, a duplicate, or fraudulent payment. In theory, these red flags had to be resolved. As you would expect, in practice, that did not always happen.
Mr. Lynn's straight pay policy raised the prevalidation threshold by $497,500, up to finally a half million dollars. This allowed the DFAS technicians to make payments up to a half million dollars without a valid obligation. To cover these payments, technicians were ordered to create a bogus account known as negative unliquidated obligations. Now, that is a Harvard word, isn't it. But they called it NULO for short, the acronym. So we have these negative unobligated obligations. Bills were then paid from these bogus NULO accounts which carried negative balances.
Mr. Lynn's policy gave DFAS accountants up to 6 months to link the payments to valid supporting obligations in the accounting records. If valid supporting documentations could not be found in that timeframe, then the center was authorized to cover the payments with other available funds with no further investigation. This is how the unmatched disbursements of the Department of Defense were born and eventually built into the billions of dollars.
In my January 19, 1999, letter to Mr. Lynn, I drew some comparisons between straight pay and the case of Air Force SSgt Robert L. Miller. Now, Robert L. Miller may not be a very famous name to most people around here, and he would not be to me if I had not run into him through this investigation. So I wanted to draw a comparison between the straight pay policy and the case of this Air Force staff sergeant.
I think Mr. Lynn and others in the Pentagon at the time remember the Miller case, and remember it all too well, or at least they did at that time. I examined that case and several others just like it in great detail at a hearing before my Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight on September 28, 1998.
As chief of vendor pay at a DFAS center, then-Staff Sergeant Miller had pursued his own unlawful versions of straight pay. Miller had full access to the Integrated Accounts Payable System. As such, Miller was able to manipulate Department of Defense systems to create obligations and invoices where none existed and generate nearly $1 million in allegedly fraudulent payments to his mother and his girlfriend. Miller was not apprehended because internal controls at DFAS were effective, the things that were under the control of Mr. Lynn; he was caught because a coworker blew the whistle on him. She was one of Miller's subordinates who had allegedly been sexually harassed by him.
At that time, I told Mr. Lynn--the same Mr. Lynn whose confirmation we are considering now--that his straight pay policy appeared to authorize DFAS accountants to do essentially what Staff Sergeant Miller did: create false bookkeeping entries to cover large payments in the absence of valid obligations. DFAS and Miller obviously had different goals, but there was a common denominator, and that common denominator was manipulation of the accounting system.
DFAS payment policies practiced on Mr. Lynn's watch left the barn door wide open to fraud and outright theft of the taxpayers' dollars.
The Government Accountability Office, which provided excellent support all the way through my investigation, fully agreed with this assessment.
There was another disturbing facet of the Miller case that I took up with Mr. Lynn. On October 19, 1995, the date that Staff Sergeant Miller became chief of vendor pay at the Dayton center--a position considered far above his rank--he was already under investigation in connection with, one, the alleged disappearance of Government checks at Castle Air Force Base and, two, allegedly directing at least eight fraudulent checks valued at $50,769 to his mother.
On October 26, 1995, just 1 week after Staff Sergeant Miller became chief of vendor pay at Dayton, an investigating officer at Castle Air Force Base made this recommendation about Miller:
Management should not place SSgt Miller in a position where he is entrusted with funds again .....
After this report was issued, Miller should have been removed from his position at the Dayton center immediately. But it took 2 years, until June 1997, when Miller was arrested for allegedly stealing the million dollars.
The whole Miller story, of course, is unbelievable.
In view of his problems at Castle Air Force Base, why did the DFAS center place him in charge of vendor pay? Why did DFAS keep him there after an official report indicated he could not be trusted with the money? That makes as much sense as hiring a bank robber to be the bank teller.
On September 18, 1998, I wrote another letter that I have. This is letter No. 9, which I ask unanimous consent be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record
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Mr. GRASSLEY. I wrote this letter to Mr. Lynn and asked him two questions: Who at Dayton--that means the financial center at Dayton--had knowledge of the Castle Air Force Base report on Miller? Who in the finance center management was responsible for totally ignoring this very dangerous red warning flag? I ended my letter to Mr. Lynn this way:
Bill, the responsible person or persons in your organization need to be held accountable for ignoring obvious and repeated warning signals about SSGT Miller's trustworthiness and giving him unrestricted access to your department's money vault.
I asked for answers to these two questions by September 23, 1998. That would have been 5 days after I wrote the letter. None ever arrived, as far as I know.
When I did not get a prompt response to my January 19 letter to Mr. Lynn on straight pay, I raised those same issues with Secretary Cohen. I did that at a hearing before the Budget Committee on March 2, 1999.
This is what Secretary Cohen said at the time:
There is no authorized procedure called Straight Pay.
Now, get that. You have straight pay that people talk about, and you have a Secretary of Defense saying there is no authorized procedure called straight pay.
The process described is not correct and is not authorized.
These answers do not square with the evidence I have tried to lay out.
Then, on March 9, came further explanation from Chief Financial Officer Lynn. He said essentially the same thing but with a slightly different twist:
The Straight Pay policy you refer to in your letter is not used at our Columbus Center. .....
There are some words left out. It goes on to say:
``Straight Pay,'' as reported to you, does not exist at the Columbus Center.
This letter No. 10 explains that in great detail, and I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record letter No. 10.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD
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Mr. GRASSLEY. I felt as though then-Secretary Cohen on the one hand and Chief Financial Officer Lynn were trying to convince me that straight pay did not exist. Their statements appear to be, even today, misleading and inaccurate.
Just because I didn't explain the policy exactly right did not mean the policy did not exist. Everything that was coming over the transom at night to me was telling me that I was on the right track.
I responded to the denials this way--and they are in this letter, my letter No. 11. I wish to quote a couple of sentences:
If this statement is indeed accurate--and ``Straight Pay'' doesn't exist, then why do I have official DFAS documents establishing ``Straight Pay Procedures?'' Are these documents a fake?
Are these documents I am getting a fake if they come directly from the financial center?
I later discovered another DFAS document, dated March 8, 1999, which states:
Due to concerns over the use of the term ``straight pay'' and its connotation, we must delete all references to ``straight pay'' the from the policy. .....
Now, how does that square with what the Secretary of Defense Cohen told me? How does that square with the exchange I had with Bill Lynn, Chief Financial Officer at that time? Those things are in this document No. 12.
I ask unanimous consent to have document No. 12 printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD
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Mr. GRASSLEY. I say to my colleagues, is the March 8, 1999, date on this document a coincidence or was this a bureaucratic tactic to suppress, to bury or to rename the policy to conform with the highest level of rhetoric that I heard in March of that year?
Not getting the straight story from the Pentagon, I brought the issue of straight pay to the attention of one of our colleagues now and a colleague back then, Senator Inhofe, who was chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee on Armed Services. My letter to Senator Inhofe is dated April 8, 1999, and I have that letter here as No. 13 document.
I ask unanimous consent to have document No. 13 printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record
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Mr. GRASSLEY. I told my friend from Oklahoma that I considered straight pay to be ``a very dangerous and misguided policy that might violate the law.'' I also told him about the Miller case heretofore referenced. I urged Senator Inhofe to ask Secretary Cohen and Chief Financial Officer Lynn five questions on straight pay at an upcoming hearing.
Mr. Lynn attempted to clarify the Department of Defense position on straight pay in a letter dated June 18, 1999. That is document No. 14.
I ask unanimous consent to have document No. 14 printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record
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Mr. GRASSLEY. In his followup letter, Mr. Lynn backed away from his assertion that straight pay did not exist. So they said it didn't exist, and now you see an assertion backing away from that. While he never used the term ``straight pay,'' he did not try to disassociate himself from the policy. His description of the policy was generally accurate, though somewhat incomplete.
I raised essentially the same question with Mr. Lynn in a recent letter, dated January 29, 2009, because of his appointment to this position of Deputy Secretary of Defense. Regrettably, he provided essentially the same answers in a letter dated February 3, 2009.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record those two letters, documents 15 and 16.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. Lynn continues to defend straight pay, a policy that Secretary Cohen said didn't exist back then. He said it was necessary ``to ensure that contractors were paid on time.''
Well, can't you pay contractors on time by having invoices and all the proper documentation to write even a $1 check? That is the streamlining effect that former Secretary Cohen argued for in his failed June 2, 1998 DRI legislative initiative.
I exchanged followup Q and A on these matters with Mr. Lynn on February 5 and 6 this year, and I will include those letters in the record as well. As Chief Financial Officer at one of our biggest departments, Mr. Lynn signed the memo authorizing straight pay policy. It was his policy.
I ask unanimous consent that the followup documents be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record
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Mr. GRASSLEY. I believe this policy developed under Mr. Lynn's leadership was dangerous, misguided, and irresponsible. It demonstrated a lack of sound business judgment. It may have been inconsistent with various provisions of law. Because don't the taxpayers expect you write a check, you have a reason for writing it, you have an invoice or something that says you
owe X number of dollars? Straight pay left the taxpayers' hard-earned money vulnerable to fraud and theft, and we have had that.
I was not alone in this assessment. At my subcommittee hearing on September 28, 1998, the Government Accountability Office witness said essentially the same thing. DFAS payment policies in Mr. Lynn's watch left the door wide open to fraud.
For all these reasons, I have to say Mr. Lynn, as Chief Financial Officer, did not do everything humanly possible to protect the taxpayers' interests. When he pushed the straight pay policy and went silent on pay-and-chase, he did not act in the public interest.
As Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Lynn was also supposed to do his part to develop and integrate a finance and accounting system that would allow the Department of Defense to produce a financial statement that could earn a clean audit opinion. I know this is a massive and complex undertaking, but Mr. Lynn could have gotten the ball rolling in the right direction, even if he didn't get it under control.
I can guarantee one thing: The principle of straight pay was not conducive to the creation of an integrated accounting system. One of the first steps in that process is to link obligations to disbursements. Straight pay truncated that link and undermined integration.
Although he claimed to have launched several important reform initiatives, there appears to be little or no measurable progress toward the goal of integration on his watch. In fact, his payment policies probably took us in the wrong and opposite direction and had an opposite effect. The Department's books of account were a mess when Mr. Lynn became Chief Financial Officer, they were a mess when he left, and I have a feeling they remain a mess today, with no fix in sight.
Congress passed the Chief Financial Officers Act in 1990 in an attempt to fix the problems in accounting of Government finances in every department. Eighteen years after this legislation, the Department of Finance, as a whole, has yet to earn a clean audit.
Mr. Lynn should not be the only person held accountable for poor accounting at the Department of Defense. He was one of many individuals in a long line of Chief Financial Officers and Comptrollers who, for whatever reason, were unsuccessful in solving the financial misstep at the Defense Department. Mr. Hamre, his predecessor, used to say: ``Fixing this problem is like changing a tire on a car going at 100 miles per hour.''
I have shared some of my sentiments on Mr. Lynn's performance as Chief Financial Officer. I hope these insights are helpful to my colleagues before they vote yes or no on this nomination. If confirmed, we hope he will do everything possible to protect our national security. We hope he will protect the taxpayers' hard-earned money, and we hope he will make sure the taxpayers' money is wisely spent and, most importantly, spent according to law. We hope he will usher in a new era of financial accountability at the Department of Defense. At this point, we simply don't know what Mr. Lynn will do. I don't own that crystal ball that would be necessary to make that determination. It is all about the future, and that is relatively unknown. But we do know something about what he did in the past as the Department of Defense Chief Financial Officer.
As Chief Financial Officer, he advocated very questionable accounting practices that obviously were not in the public interest. Writing a check in any department without knowing what that check is paying for is not in the public's interest. It is not a wise expenditure of public money. We need accounting systems that account for every dollar going out, having a purpose of a service or a product that it bought. I urge my colleagues then to weigh those considerations in reaching a decision on how to vote on the Lynn nomination.
Lastly, I wish to take a moment to thank the Senate Armed Services Committee leadership, both Republican and Democratic, and their staff for their patience on this issue. I appreciate the time Chairman Levin has given me to discuss this nomination. I lay everything I have said before the Senate for consideration.
I have already sought permission to have some of these documents printed in the Record, so I don't think I have to do that.
I yield the floor.
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I apologize to Chairman Levin. I had to leave the floor to attend a conference meeting on the stimulus bill before he finished his remarks.
I would like to rebut his remarks regarding Mr. Bill Lynn.
In regards to the Executive order on ethics, I agree President Obama is attempting to set high standards for executive branch appointees; however, giving special waivers to nominees such as Mr. Lynn water down the spirit and authority of his own Executive order. I would ask President Obama: How many more waivers will you grant in the next 4 years?
I say to Chairman LEVIN, you seemed to blame former Defense Secretary Cohen for the financial troubles at DOD, not Mr. Lynn. I could not disagree with you more on this issue. Chief Financial Officer Lynn was chiefly responsible for the policies and regulations governing accounting practices. His straight-pay policy went against all commonsense accounting practices. DFAS technicians should not have paid bills like they did without first confirming that the proper obligations were in the books of account.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
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