Pentagon Broke Budgetary Limits Almost 75% of Time for Past Decade

A report by the US Government Accountability Office reveals that the Department of Defense failed to maintain its current cash reserves within budgetary planned limits for nearly three quarters of the time during the past decade.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The US Department of Defense failed to maintain its current cash reserves within budgetary planned limits for nearly three quarters of the time during the past decade, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report on Friday.

"Defense-wide Working Capital Fund's (DWWCF) reported monthly cash balances were outside the upper and lower cash requirements as defined by the Department of Defense's Financial Management Regulation (FMR) for 87 of 120 months," the report stated.

On three occasions during the decade from 2007 to 2016, the Defense Department’s available cash was remained outside budgetary approved limits for at least a year at a time, the GAO recorded.

Reported monthly cash balances were outside the FMR’s upper and lower cash requirements for "more than 12 consecutive months on three separate occasions during fiscal years 2007 through 2016," the report said.

The Defense-wide Working Capital Fund reported total revenue of $45.7 billion in fiscal year 2016 from providing finance, accounting, information technology and energy solution services to the military services and managing inventory items for the military services, the GAO added.