An Army of Accountants

I received the following email from a friend of mine last week…

“What’s your opinion of the USA funding Ukraine? I’m curious where you stand on that. [Personally] I’m torn on it; however, I can guarantee (being a former federal auditor) that a lot of it is either being wasted or being used for reasons it wasn’t intended for.”

That got me thinking…

In my reply, I said that I initially supported sending money and weapons to Ukraine as a deterrent to future Russian aggression. Unchecked, I felt, Russia would continue to work its way across eastern Europe, annexing territory after territory the way they did Crimea in 2014… and eerily similar to the way Adolf Hitler conquered most of Europe in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

But like most Americans, I have grave concerns about whether the money we are sending to Ukraine is being used wisely and for its intended purposes. How do we know that every U.S. dollar is being spent on weapons, ammunition, and other military hardware? Are we simply taking Volodymyr Zelensky’s word for it or are we demanding true accountability?

That got me thinking too…

No one on either side of the aisle wants to send U.S. troops to Ukraine, but how about sending a small army of accountants? If Zelensky wants money for a new missile, let him state his case to the accountants and then provide a matching receipt after each purchase. Every expenditure, no matter how big or how small, should require an accountant’s approval and have a verified paper trail.

Will such a policy stop all corruption in its tracks? Hardly. But it may prevent some Ukrainian politicians and power brokers from lining their pockets indiscriminately. After all, every dollar matters, because it is coming from the increasingly threadbare pockets of American taxpayers.