[Gen.Blather]

“They should be assigned one accountant per 15 billion increment to track what happens to money in terms of the intent for which it was appropriated. “

As a project manager I might have had X dollars allocated to pay for something that has been overcome by events. The money is in the budget, but not usable. Then, we run into a problem that may result in cancelling the program. There was no way for me to transfer the money from where it is misallocated to resolve the problem. A fifty-four million dollar project gets cancelled.

Making the military budget make sense according to changing reality is not an easy issue. And, usually the accountants are the last people who can help resolve issues. What we need are honest program managers on the military side who can be trusted to make wise decisions. Some of the ones I dealt with had little or no knowledge about the projects they were leading. (The Army was especially bad. The Navy was the best and most knowledgeable, followed by the Air Force.)

[xzins]

All i want is for them to track the money, not determine its disposition.

[marktwain]

Making the military budget make sense according to changing reality is not an easy issue. And, usually the accountants are the last people who can help resolve issues. What we need are honest program managers on the military side who can be trusted to make wise decisions.

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You understand the problems well. Excessively restrictive rules on use of the money (account for every expenditure down to the penny every day, only on what exactly Congress has authorized by name of each item) makes it impossible to run a program.

You need flexibility and accountability together.

Otherwise exactly what you mentioned happens. Everyone gets tied up in following multitudinous, minute rules, and little positive gets done.