‘You Can’t Answer The Dadgum Questions’: Tim Burchett Lays Into Witness Over Failure To Detail DoD Fraud

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During a House Oversight Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) had a tense exchange with Kelly P. Mayo, Deputy Inspector General for Investigations and Director of Defense Criminal Investigative Services at the DOD Office of Inspector General.

Transcript

00:00Time. The gentleman from Tennessee, my friend, Mr. Burchett. You're recognized, sir.

00:05Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Mayo, I share your enthusiasm when I look back on my life.

00:14I didn't have anything like yours. I had two wonderful parents. They're both in heaven,

00:17and they were the best influence in my life and a lot of my buddy's life, but I still,

00:23every day I'm up here, I think it's just an incredible gift. More people played pro-baseball

00:31than have been in Congress, so thank you for what you said, brother.

00:36I think fraud is just a part of the military heritage almost. When Daddy was in the Pacific

00:42in the Second World War, and they know they're going to be in the tropics, and it's going to be

00:46raining, and it's going to be hot, and they had this old crappy rain gear, didn't keep you dry,

00:53and it was just a nightmare. They never fixed it. They had guns that didn't work correctly.

00:58It looked like they were made by a committee in Washington, not by somebody in combat.

01:04And currently, we're building aircraft carriers, and everybody will tell you, it's not going to be

01:10my daddy's war. The Japanese aren't going to bomb Pearl Harbor. Six to eight months later,

01:15Americans might. It's not going to roll out across the Pacific and destroy a very evil enemy.

01:21And if you go on sites like unusual whales, you'll see the abuse that goes on by members

01:31of Congress, and it's never going to change. One of the things that would change if we would

01:35eliminate individual stock trades, but that's not going to happen. We'll come up with a good

01:41bipartisan bill we're working on at me, and Priapal, and AOC, and Chipperoy, and some others,

01:46very bipartisan, but I have no doubt that it will pass. I mean, there's no inclination that it will

01:52pass because we don't have the guts because this town is crooked as a dog's leg, and it's part of

01:57our heritage, and that disgusts me. But saying all that, I guess you're my therapist today,

02:05Mr. Mayo. Department of Defense leadership say that you do not believe there's a significant fraud

02:12fraud at DOD. Based on your work, do you agree with that?

02:16I disagree. Yes, sir. I disagree with that.

02:18You disagree with that? On what basis do you...

02:23Our work shows there is a lot of, in my statement, there was significant procurement fraud across the

02:32panoply of the DOD overseas, and so we have a problem.

02:40Yeah. I think part of the problem is we've got a lot of war pimps at the Pentagon, and they're not

02:44the ones going to go be dying. It's going to be people like my little girl and some of the kids in

02:50this audience that are going to die in some of these worthless wars we're in. How much do you think

02:55the Department of Defense loses every year to fraud?

02:58I couldn't say, sir. I really couldn't. I could probably ask people smarter than me and my staff,

03:03but I can get back to you on that. Well, see, that's part of the problem. They send you two guys

03:07in here, and I suspect you all are pretty honest guys, and give you the...you can't answer the dadgum

03:15questions, and to me that just shows an inherent arrogance that we have at the Pentagon. They haven't

03:21passed eight audits. They haven't even attempted to finish the dadgum audits, and yet they come up here

03:26and we give them more money. Again, our greed. Old men make decisions and young men are going to die.

03:33What fraud practice in the Department of Defense are we especially vulnerable to?

03:41It's either one of y'all want to take a shot at that. It'd be all right.

03:43The procurement fraud is especially the one that we see the most of, and we target the most,

03:56because that's the big dollar projects. So that would be my question. Do I have an answer to that?

04:02It just seems like we're letting these people steal from us. I just don't think that'll ever stop.

04:08I can remember in a meeting one time they started pointing out aircraft carriers, which we know are

04:15antiquated. We're not going to need them in the future. All the people that are in the know tell

04:21us you're not going to need them. You're going to have a half a trillion dollars worth of apparatus

04:23sitting on the deck, and some uneducated country is going to send a hundred thousand dollar missile in

04:32the sink at all. And you can put a million dollar worth of drones up in the air and knock down a

04:37half trillion dollar jet, and yet we are continuing down that path. And part of the problem is, as they

04:44did in the meeting, they started pointing out in people's district what apparatus was made in their

04:48district. And even though we're going to mothball this stuff, we're going to put it on a shelf,

04:54people are going without in this country, yet the war pimps still tend to profit, and we allow it.

05:00I just don't think it's ever going to change. I think people up here are sincere. I would say

05:06our chairman and ranking member Mfumi are some of the most honest, honorable people I've ever served

05:11with. But I think this is the type of committee they just pat us on the head and tell us, oh,

05:16you're doing a great job, and then the corruption continues, and it's both dadgum parties. We ought to

05:20be ashamed of ourselves. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

05:25Gentleman yields back his time. I would like to see if I could try and begin to answer one of the

05:30questions that is in testimony. From 2017 to 2024, DOD reported $10.8 billion in confirmed fraud.

05:42The reason why they do not know that exact number is because DOD fails to even put the hooks in place

05:50to discover more, and we do not have enough people on the front line stopping it. But $10.8 billion is

05:59very significant. I appreciate the gentleman's not only line of questioning, but holding accountable

06:06the significant amount of that. Mr. Chairman, we just don't have the guts to do anything about it.

06:11We're going to sit up here and make platitudes, not you all, but other members of Congress will,

06:17and then they'll walk out and wink and nod to the K Street lobbyists to profit from this. So thank you,

06:22Mr. Chairman.

06:32Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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