FIRST LOOK – DOD has $209 million in outstanding debt from defense contractors that hasn’t been collected, some of it dating from as far back as fiscal year 2005. A group of senators – Tom Carper (D-Del.), Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) – will today press the department to do a better job of collecting unpaid debts. In a letter to DFAS Director Teresa McKay, the senators will request an accounting of uncollected debts and efforts to recover the money. See the letter here. http://www.politico.com/static/PPM41_for_release.html

CARPER’S OFFICE EMAILED US A STATEMENT: “A recent Department of Defense Office of Inspector General report detailed hundreds of millions of dollars owed to the federal government that will be difficult to collect due to poor bookkeeping. That is unacceptable. Adding insult to injury, the Department’s poor bookkeeping can mean that delinquent contractors who owe the government money might actually still be receiving payments from the government.”

Added Brown: “In light of the current budget crisis, we simply cannot afford to let hundreds of millions of dollars owed to the federal government go unpaid because of poor financial management practices at DOD.”