Sanders Pushes To End Pentagon's 'Wasteful Spending' With New Bill: 'Each Year, Auditors Find Billions In … Couch Cushions'

Bernie Sanders and a bipartisan group of senators, including Chuck Grassley, Ron Wyden, Rand Paul and Ed Markey, introduced a new bill to end Pentagon's “wasteful spending.”

What Happened: The Audit the Pentagon bill by Sanders and other senators aims to mandate the Department of Defense (DoD) to pass a full, independent audit in the fiscal year 2024. If any DoD component fails to achieve a clean audit, the legislation would require them to return 1% of their budget to the Treasury. 

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"The Pentagon is the only federal department that can’t pass an audit, decades after Congress required it to do so. It accounts for two-thirds of all federal contracting but can’t account for trillions in assets. Each year, auditors find billions in the Pentagon’s couch cushions," said Sanders. 

"This is unacceptable. That’s why I’ve introduced the Audit the Pentagon Act with [Chuck Grassley]. This bipartisan bill would require every DoD component to pass an audit – any component that fails would have one percent of its budget returned to the Treasury for deficit reduction.”

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According to the official joint statement, the 2022 audit of the Navy uncovered $4.4 billion of previously untracked inventory, while the Air Force identified $5.2 billion in discrepancies in its general ledger.

Reports indicate that contractors have consistently overcharged the Pentagon and taxpayers, with markups ranging from nearly 40%-50% to an astonishing 4,451%, it added.

"The Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan concluded $31-60 billion spent in Iraq and Afghanistan was lost to fraud and waste."

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Meanwhile, the Pentagon recently said it overestimated the value of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine by $6.2 billion over the past two years — about double early estimates. 

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