Auditors Say That Government's Records Are So Inadequate They Cannot Be Evaluated, but Bush Official Cites Progress

The U.S. government's financial record-keeping is so inadequate that congressional auditors said last week that they could not determine whether the federal books meet generally accepted accounting principles.
It was the eighth fiscal year in a row that the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, was unable to provide a definitive opinion on the quality of the federal government's consolidated financial statements.