Chronicling Pentagon's Financial Woes

It's not exactly news that the Defense Department can't get its financial house in order. Still, this piece from Portfolio is a pretty damning indictment of the slow pace of improvements on this front.

Almost a decade ago, Government Executive was reporting that the Pentagon was making progress in financial reform. Four years ago we listed Defense among the agencies said to be on brink of a financial breakthrough. As recently as last fall, Defense comptroller Tina Jonas insisted that the department's financial management was better than perceived. It would be nice if the Pentagon bean-counters could clear the hurdle of being able to produce a clean financial statement, if only because of the symbolic value such an achievement would have.