As RedState reported on November 12, President-elect Donald Trump announced that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy will lead his newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Trump said at the time:
These two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my administration to cut government bureaucracy, reduce excessive regulations, cut wasteful spending and restructure federal agencies – crucial to the Save America movement.
If there is a better example of the Ministry’s urgent need for government efficiency – led by Musk and Ramaswamy, no less – than the one that follows the link below, I don’t know what it is.
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Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy appointed to head the Department of Government Efficiency
It was reported on Friday that the Pentagon, the country’s largest government agency, failed the seventh audit in a row, still unable to fully cover its budget of more than $824 billion. Don’t worry, Pentagon officials suggested, emphasizing that they are making “good progress” toward a pristine audit in 2028.
Two thousand twenty-eight? Something tells me that in Elon and Vivek’s eyes, more than four years isn’t good enough.
According to reports, the Defense Department — led by often-under-fire Secretary Lloyd Austin — has technically earned a disclaimer, meaning this is the case insufficient information was provided to the examiners to form an exact opinion.
First question: Why? I would venture to guess that the answer lies in the fact that sufficient information has not been found anywhere, which begs the second question: Why not?
The goal is to obtain a pristine audit, meaning that an audit finds that financial statements are exact and that a qualified opinion states that a government agency’s finances are “generally reliable” despite omissions and concerns.
In this case we are talking about more than 824 billion taxpayers’ money. I suspect that Musk and Ramaswamy are not only concerned about exact financial data, which is of course a must, but, more importantly, the Size the Pentagon budget and eliminating wasteful and unnecessary spending trumps everything. (pun intended)
Still, Undersecretary of Audit and Chief Financial Officer Michael McCord said in a statement that despite the disclaimer on the statement, the Defense Department “has made a turnaround in its understanding of the depth and breadth of its challenges.”
This is the last time I’ll mention Elon and Vivek in this article, but I bet “turning things around” isn’t good enough either – especially for another four years.
McCord continued:
The momentum is on our side, and there is powerful commitment across the department – and confidence in our ability – to obtain an unchanged audit opinion.
And at a briefing with reporters on Friday, McCord said:
I’m not saying we failed, as I said, we have clear opinions about halfway through. We have half of the opinions that are not pristine. So if someone has a report card that is half good and half not good, I don’t know that they would call the student or the report card a failure. We still have a lot to do, but I think we are making progress.
Hmmm. We’re not talking about a student’s transcript here, buddy. We’re talking about just under one here Trillion dollars and the Defense and security of the United States of America.
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By the way, the Pentagon has never has passed an audit since the agency was legally required to do so in 2018.
Without naming names, as I have already suggested, I feel that the Ministry of Defense is being held full responsibility for both its spending and its initiatives well before 2028.
I think I’ll just leave it here for now.
