ATFM episode 33: Overcoming challenges for defense financial managers

Mike McCord's Story

Mike McCord: So in college, going back 40 years or so, I trained as a policy analyst, especially on fiscal policy, but I was not a defense analyst. So my first job out of college was at the Congressional Budget Office 40 years ago as a defense analyst of military personnel pay and benefits. After two years there, I was offered an opportunity to work for a harder, but more interesting work on the Senate Armed Services Committee, one of the four committees that oversees the Defense department, where I ended up spending 21 years going from the late Cold War, end of the Cold War through the end of the second Bush administration at the end of 2008. So that prepared me well for moving over to DOD with the Obama administration as the Deputy Comptroller for five years, and then as the Comptroller for the last three. 

I was also fortunate enough to work for Bob Hale there in my first tour at DOD, after having worked with Bob at CBO way back in my first job in the mid-1980s. So interesting to reconnect there. As you may know, I left as political appointees do when Trump was elected in 2016 and the Obama administration ended, and then the Biden administration asked me to come serve as a Comptroller again, which is unusual to have someone come back and do the same job twice. So by the time I got to be the Comptroller the first time in 2016, I had 30 years of experience in national security and budgeting. I had undergrad and grad school training in things like economics and statistics, and policy modeling, fiscal policy and accounting. I had good contacts by then in both parties from my time on Capitol Hill, House and Senate. 

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