Grassley Encourages More Bite from Defense Watchdog

Press Release

Calling the audit work of the Defense Department's inspector general a mission of the highest importance, Senator Chuck Grassley today urged auditors to double down on improvements to their work with stronger recommendations, a greater focus on fraud and appropriate criminal referrals, timeliness, and follow-up efforts that result in accountability and recovery of improper payments.

Grassley made his remarks as he released his third report card assessing the audit work of the Inspector General's office. Grassley's latest review awarded a grade of C, up from last year's D-minus.

"There's nothing more important to the taxpayers than having an aggressive team of auditors watch-dogging how the taxpayers' money is spent," Grassley said. "The good news is that in response to the feedback from these report cards and a productive ongoing dialogue, audit quality appears to be improving."

The senator said he began assessing this audit work three years ago based on a tip about mismanagement and no benefit to taxpayers or program integrity despite a cost of $100 million a year for the auditing operation.

Grassley said that the work he first examined was little more than policy and compliance reviews, with no real attempt to scrutinize the dollar impact of misguided efforts. "If we're going to have accountability with valuable defense dollars, we need hard-core, fraud-busting contract audits," Grassley said.

Earlier this month, Grassley asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to examine audit recommendations and pursue reforms. Today, Grassley said he appreciates the interest of Acting Inspector General Lynne M. Halbrooks in making the audit work more aggressive and effective. Grassley shared his review with Halbrooks in a detailed 25 page document. Grassley's floor statement about his continuing effort is below.

The Iowa senator has a long history of defense oversight and legislative reform work. During the 1980s, he led a vigorous campaign for military procurement reform. Grassley helped to expose the gross overpricing of spare parts and won passage in May 1985 of an amendment that froze the defense budget and ended the Reagan military budget build up. In working to reduce waste, fraud and abuse of defense dollars, Grassley took on the iron triangle of congressional committees, the Pentagon and special interest groups. He has been a leader in drawing attention to egregious practices of the Defense Finance and Accounting Services, the agency which manages payments for the Department of Defense, and offered a series of reform amendments to annual spending bills for the Department of Defense, while also ramping up pressure on auditors for the Inspector General to conduct aggressive and meaningful reviews of accounting practices. Over many years, Grassley has worked to empower watchdogs and whistleblowers to speak up regarding defense spending abuses and to hold accountable inspectors general responsible for oversight of defense dollars.

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