Department Of Energy Office Of Inspector General Audit Of The Department Of Energy: Fill & Download for Free

The Defense Department over the years has been notorious for its lax accounting practices. The Pentagon has never completed an audit of how they actually spend the trillions of dollars on wars, equipment, personnel, housing, healthcare and procurement's. Department of Defense inspector general’s report gives eye opening information to just how incompetent the military’s auditing system is.The Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the behemoth Indianapolis-based agency that provides finance and accounting services for the Pentagon’s civilian and military members, could not provide adequate documentation for $6.5 trillion worth of year-end adjustments to Army general fund transactions and data.The DFAS has the sole responsibility for paying all DOD military and personnel, retirees and annuitants, along with Pentagon contractors and vendors. The agency is also in charge of electronic government initiatives, including within the Executive Office of the President, the Department of Energy and the Departing of Veterans Affairs.There’s nothing in the new AIG’s report to suggest that anyone has misplaced or absconded with large sums of money. Rather, the agency has done an incompetent job of providing written authorization for every one of their transactions – so-called “journal vouchers” that provide serial numbers, transaction dates and the amount of the expenditure.The Pentagon's accounting records are so convoluted that billions of dollars cannot be accounted for, charges a new government report. In fact, no major part of the Department of Defense (DOD) has ever passed an audit, according to recent congressional testimony by the non-partisan U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress. The Pentagon admitted that flawed business systems and practices are common within the agency and said it would take decades to get all of the agency books in order. Accounting problems led the GAO in 1995 to put DOD financial management on GAO's list of agencies that are at high-risk of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.Some of the GAO's findings are astonishing:About 58 percent of the material the Pentagon possesses ($36.9 billion worth) are items it does not need.Over the past three years, the Navy lost track of $3 billion in equipment and other items.At one distribution center for the Navy, there was a backlog of over 122,000 items that had not been properly processed, leading the Navy to purchase items it didn't need.The $600 billion Pentagon inventory of weapons systems and other items failed to include nearly $6 billion in Army communications defense equipment, $7.6 billion in Navy aircraft engines and about $7 billion in Air Force electronic pods that attach to warplanes.The GAO testimony follows a March report by the office of the Defense Department's Inspector General that concluded that the Pentagon's books were in such disarray that they couldn't be audited. In fact, the Pentagon's books are in such poor shape that the military's money managers last year made almost $7 trillion in adjustments to their financial ledgers in an attempt in make them add up. The Inspector General also concluded the Pentagon could not show receipts for $2.3 trillion of those changes and half a trillion dollars of the adjustments were corrections of earlier mistakes.The Pentagon is not alone: Only 11 of 24 big federal agencies could produce reliable financial statements for last fiscal year. Taxpayers must be prepared to pass an audit. It is high time Congress demanded the same level of accountability from the Pentagon and other high-risk agencies. Why Can’t the Pentagon Pass An Audit?I’m appalled as a tax paying citizen that our government can be so wasteful with our hard-earned tax dollars that they cannot maintain a correct accounting of their spending or keep to a budget. Hopefully our new President and Congress will demand a true accounting of what our government agencies are spending.Hope this was helpful.

Congress may not like it when Trump fires an inspector general – but it can’t do anything to stop himPresident Donald Trump’s late-night firing of the State Department inspector general is only the latest in his purge of – and resistance to – these independent and nonpolitical law enforcement officers.Trump isn’t the only president to get rid of inspectors general.President Ronald Reagan attempted to fire and replace all currently serving inspectors general upon his assuming office in 1981. But he backed off and ultimately allowed many of them to continue in office.President Barack Obama removed the inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service in 2009 without significant opposition.But Trump had already discharged three inspectors general before the latest firing, which goes beyond previous presidents’ attempts to rein in these officials. And he has couched his actions in language that reflects his longstanding resistance to oversight by Congress of his administration and the executive branch.And it appears Congress can do little about these firings.Resisting oversightAmong the others fired by Trump are the Intelligence Community inspector general, whose release of a CIA employee’s whistleblower complaint prompted impeachment proceedings.He got rid of long-serving acting Department of Defense Inspector General Glenn Fine. Fine was slated to lead the new Pandemic Response Accountability Committee created by the CARES Act, the coronavirus relief bill.Trump also pushed out Christi Grimm, the acting inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Resources. She was fired after issuing a report critical of the administration’s handling of pandemic testing.Fired State Department Inspector General Steve Linick in the U.S. Capitol, Oct. 2, 2019. Getty/Win McNameeIn a related attempt to place loyalists in these oversight positions, Trump replaced Fine with a former White House counsel who had participated in his impeachment defense.Trump has resisted Congress’ attempt to hold his administration accountable in spending the pandemic recovery money, challenging the inspector general’s ability to directly communicate with Congress. He claims that for the inspector general to do so without his permission would violate the Constitution.Executive departments and agencies – like the Departments of State or Defense – often butt heads with inspectors general over access to documents or investigation of high-ranking appointees. But Trump’s challenge is the broadest and the first to ground dismissals in response to investigations into his own conduct or the conduct of his administration.Saving taxpayer moneyThe Inspector General Act of 1978 was one of the many post-Watergate government reforms. It aimed to increase government accountability and prevent waste, fraud and abuse in agencies and programs.President Jimmy Carter called the Inspector General Act “perhaps the most important new tool in the fight against fraud.”Whether ferreting out fraud in defense contracts, investigating Medicare scams or identifying government employees who submitted false expenses, inspectors general have played a major law enforcement role.The inspectors general are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The law states that inspectors general are to be appointed “without regard to political affiliation” and solely on the basis of integrity and demonstrated ability in accounting, auditing, law, financial analysis or investigations.There are now 73 inspectors general with 14,000 employees who monitor federal agencies from the Department of Defense and Energy to Amtrak, the Postal Service and the Library of Congress.Since 1978, they have audited thousands of programs, referred hundreds of cases for criminal prosecution and recovered billions in taxpayer dollars.‘Loss of confidence’The president appoints the inspectors general and may remove them, as he may remove most executive branch appointees.Beyond that power wielded by the president, inspectors general are independent. While they are under the “general supervision” of the head of the department or agency where they work, they do not report to and are not subject to supervision by any other officer in the government or agency.In fact, the law says that “Neither the head of the establishment nor the officer next in rank below such head shall prevent or prohibit the Inspector General from initiating, carrying out, or completing any audit or investigation, or from issuing any subpoena.”The president must communicate in writing the reasons for removal of any inspector general. In the removal of the State Department inspector general, President Trump sent a terse letter to Congress, saying that he his reason for firing Linick was that he “no longer” had the “fullest confidence” in him.Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a decades-long champion of the role of inspectors general, stated that a “general lack of confidence simply is not sufficient detail to satisfy Congress.”Despite congressional uproar over these dismissals from Democrats and some Republicans, there is serious doubt about what conditions or limits Congress could place on the president’s power to remove the inspectors general.Under Supreme Court precedents related to the principles of separation of power, Congress – one branch of government – cannot remove an official in the executive branch – another branch of government – except by impeachment. That has been interpreted to mean, by inference, that Congress has no power over the president’s ability to fire an executive branch official, including inspectors general.Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican from Iowa, criticized the reason Trump offered for firing Linick. Getty/Drew AngererEchoes of previous Trump claimsWhere Congress has attempted to exert some control over inspectors general is through requiring that they provide information to Congress to assist in its oversight function.For example, the law that created the position of inspectors general requires them to report immediately to their agency head when they become aware of particularly serious or flagrant problems, abuses or deficiencies in agency programs.That information, in turn, must be transmitted to Congress within seven days.A separate provision states that nothing in the law shall be construed to authorize withholding information from the Congress.But disputes have arisen between Congress and the executive branch over the interpretation of these provisions.Indeed, part of President Trump’s reason for dismissing the Intelligence Community’s inspector general was based on that inspector general’s release to congressional committees of the whistleblower complaint that kicked off the Ukraine impeachment inquiry. The president has asserted that inspectors general have no constitutional right to investigate him, the chief executive of the nation.No president until Trump had asserted that by reporting findings to Congress, inspectors general were making unconstitutional intrusions into presidential and executive branch prerogative.The president’s signing statement accompanying the CARES Act was dominated by objections that the legislation “violates the separation of powers by intruding upon the President’s power and duty to supervise the staffing of the executive branch.” Trump argued that he would not heed the CARES Act requirement that an inspector general report directly to Congress on the law’s administration. They would only do so, he wrote, under “presidential supervision.”This argument – that as president, he is beyond accountability – echoes the claims Trump has raised as he fights congressional subpoenas for his tax returns and private records from his businesses in two cases argued before the Supreme Court recently.Whatever answer the court delivers in those cases, it’s not likely to stop the president from firing another inspector general. And it doesn’t look like Congress has the power to stop him.

Yes. Through a loophole several non law enforcement departments have their own para-military force that act as swat teams.According to huff post:it says something about our reliance on the military that federal agencies having nothing whatsoever to do with national defense now see the need for their own paramilitary units. Among those federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions are the State Department, Department of Education, Department of Energy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service, to name just a few.These agencies have secured the services of fully armed agents -- often in SWAT team attire -- through a typical bureaucratic slight-of-hand provision allowing for the creation of Offices of Inspectors General (OIG). Each OIG office is supposedly charged with not only auditing their particular agency's actions but also uncovering possible misconduct, waste, fraud, theft, or certain types of criminal activity by individuals or groups related to the agency's operation. At present, there are 73 such OIG offices in the federal government that, at times, perpetuate a police state aura about them.For example, it was heavily armed agents from one such OIG office, working under the auspices of the Department of Education, who forced their way into the home of a California man, handcuffed him, and placed his three children (ages 3, 7, and 11) in a squad car while they conducted a search of his home. This federal SWAT team raid, which is essentially what it was, on the home of Kenneth Wright on Tuesday, June 7, 2011, was allegedly intended to ferret out information on Wright's estranged wife, Michelle, who no longer lives with him and who was suspected of financial aid fraud (early news reports characterized the purpose of the raid as being over Michelle's delinquent student loans).SWAT Team Mania: The War Against the American CitizenThe national review:Military-style units from government agencies are wreaking havoc on non-violent citizens.Regardless of how people feel about Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with the federal Bureau of Land Management over his cattle’s grazing rights, a lot of Americans were surprised to see TV images of an armed-to-the-teeth paramilitary wing of the BLM deployed around Bundy’s ranch.They shouldn’t have been. Dozens of federal agencies now have Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams to further an expanding definition of their missions. It’s not controversial that the Secret Service and the Bureau of Prisons have them. But what about the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service? All of these have their own SWAT units and are part of a worrying trend towards the militarization of federal agencies — not to mention local police forces.The United States of SWAT? | National ReviewSo yes, the depaetment of education and several other agencies dedicated to beurocratic missions are given and use swat teams, for less than violent offenses, even if under a different name.