Lawmakers want answers from the Pentagon after it failed 7 audits

The Pentagon's failed its last seven audits. Now lawmakers are demanding answers

A bipartisan group of House members want Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to explain when the Pentagon will get to a point where it can pass a single audit

Members of the House Oversight Committee sent the request in a letter to Hegseth Monday

It comes as the Department of Defense is expected to fail its audit next year

The lawmakers want Hexf to deliver a briefing to Congress by the end of the month on the DOD's efforts

The letter reads, in part, DOD's spending comprises nearly half of the federal government's discretionary spending

and its physical assets make up more than 70 percent of the government's physical assets

The failure to fully account for these assets and spending results in gaps in DOD's operational readiness

and the financial strength of the entire federal government. In a notable example of this problem in 2022 the DOD failed to properly account for more than 60 of its trillion in assets and that number increased in 2023 That year the Pentagon failed to properly document 63 percent of

its $3.8 trillion in assets, according to the department's inspector general. The Pentagon says

it's unable to obtain full documentation because it does not have access to military contractor

records. According to the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon is the only federal agency

that has never obtained an unmodified or clean audit opinion on its financial statements

primarily due to serious financial management system weaknesses. Lawmakers want a progress

report to ensure the DOD is on track to obtain a clean audit opinion by 2028. The request comes as

President Trump seeks a more than $1 trillion budget for the Pentagon in the fiscal year 2026

a 13 percent increase from the year prior. For more on this story

download the Straight Hour News app or visit san.com. For Straight Hour News, I'm Kaylee Carey