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Press ReleasesSeptember 10, 2008 McCaskill Gets Tough With Agency Overseeing Defense Contracting Senator goes after DoD auditors in today's hearing WASHINGTON, D.C. – After a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed deep problems at the agency tasked with auditing billions of dollars in government contracting, U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill called for big changes today. In a hearing of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Missouri senator took to task representatives from the Defense Contract Auditing Agency (DCAA) for their failure to meet government auditing standards. In late July, the GAO issued a report which found that supervisors at the DCAA dropped findings from audits, changed opinions, and used intimidation to get agency auditors to alter audits in favor of contractors. “This is really fundamentally broken,” McCaskill said. “The culture is broken, the performance standards are broken, and the oversight is broken. We’ve got to get it fixed.” In particular, McCaskill, a former state auditor of Missouri, criticized the DCAA for using measures to evaluate an auditor’s performance that prioritize the speed with which audits are completed and the satisfaction of the auditee, rather than the amount of taxpayer dollars saved. Employees were threatened with poor performance reviews if they did not comply. McCaskill also questioned the way whistleblowers were treated by the DCAA and the DoD Inspectors General’s office. Following witness testimony from auditors that both agencies had failed to protect whistleblowers who sought to expose offenses, McCaskill took to task the DCAA for punishing employees who tried to report abuses and castigated the DoD IG for turning whistleblowers’ complaints back over to these very same officials at the DCAA. “If I had gotten a report like that of my audit agency and I was in charge, I guarantee that my response would have been much different,” said McCaskill. “This is text book whistleblower abuse within the most important audit agency in government due to the massive amount of spending in the Department of Defense and our active military.” McCaskill invited whistleblowers to seek the help of her office if they feel threatened. Although McCaskill has called for terminations at the DCAA as a response to these reported abuses, she believes that with reformed performance standards that value the amount of taxpayer money saved instead of the speed at which the audit is completed, the DCAA can reestablish itself as an important government watchdog. “This is the first chapter of what I hope will be many chapters towards a happy ending at DCAA, including the kind of independence they need, the resources they need, the performance metrics that celebrate the taxpayers instead of defense contractors and procurement officers.”
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