Posted on 11/30/2018 8:19:40 AM PST by TigerClaws
November 15, Ernst & Young and other private firms that were hired to audit the Pentagon announced that they could not complete the job. Congress had ordered an independent audit of the Department of Defense, the government’s largest discretionary cost center—the Pentagon receives 54 cents out of every dollar in federal appropriations—after the Pentagon failed for decades to audit itself. The firms concluded, however, that the DoD’s financial records were riddled with so many bookkeeping deficiencies, irregularities, and errors that a reliable audit was simply impossible.
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To make sure that fiscal year 2015 was not an anomaly, Skidmore and his graduate students expanded their inquiry, examining OIG reports on Pentagon financial records stretching back to 1998. Time and again, they found that the amounts of money reported as having flowed into and out of the Defense Department were gargantuan, often dwarfing the amounts Congress had appropriated: $1.7 trillion in 1998, $2.3 trillion in 1999, $1.1 trillion in 2000, $1.1 trillion in 2007, $875 billion in 2010, and $1.7 trillion in 2012, plus amounts in the hundreds of billions in other years.
In all, at least a mind-boggling $21 trillion of Pentagon financial transactions between 1998 and 2015 could not be traced, documented, or explained, concluded Skidmore. To convey the vastness of that sum, $21 trillion is roughly five times more than the entire federal government spends in a year. It is greater than the US Gross National Product, the world’s largest at an estimated $18.8 trillion. And that $21 trillion includes only plugs that were disclosed in reports by the Office of Inspector General, which does not review all of the Pentagon’s spending.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...
And last year..... remember HUD Secy Dr Ben Carson found $500 billion unaccounted for at the housing agency.
HUD is a known get-rich-quick agency for thieving Democrats.
The legend is Clinton’s HUD Secy-—Andrew Cuomo-—now NY gov——walked away with millions.
Disgusting that the last Democrat to hold the HUD job was one of the Castro brothers...a potential Hillary VP pick.
The Castro mother is a La Raza activist.
God knows how much those crooks stole for the blood-thirsty, America-hating La Raza.
Find $20 billion for a wall in all of that..........
“The Nation” is not to be taken at face value; it is an outlet for fake news and leftist propaganda.
Bush, Clinton , Bush, Usurper
Daddy Bush started US on the road to becoming North Mexico.
Goes back to 1998. This looks like a government within a government.
That's a dishonest bookkeeping trick. It willfully and dishonestly disregards Social Security, Medicare, and the various other welfare programs.
A lot has to do with data sharing and antiquated systems, and it goes beyond budgetary functions. It has effected every doctrinal function (administration, intelligence, operations, logistics, communications, planning, training, etc).
The entire system needs to be overhauled. Particularly intelligence. It is horrid.
President Trump really should freeze the Pentagon’s budget until a proper audit is completed.
You are correct. Our printed, fiat, currency which is based on debt means that every government scam and social-engineering project will never go unfunded.
Wow. In their world, a billion dollars is chump change.
Yes, and I can also say “no standing armies” (or secret armies) along with our Founders.
This line jumped out at me:
“...money reported as having flowed into and out of the Defense Department...”
It’s been a while since I took accounting, but isn’t there a huge difference between cash flow and balance sheets?
Isn’t it the balance sheets that tie to the budget and not the cash flow?
WHAT the ....
The dirty money that Hillary hid through arch Muslim criminal Feta Gulen in Malaysia is enormous. The money that Obama channeled to cronies is enormous. There are slush funds in the tens of billions. The ‘resistance’ is funded to last beyond Trump but the sooner they impeach him or drive him from office, the more money they save.
20 billion is 2 hundredths of a trillion. Literally, it is nickels on the dollar compared to what is unaccounted for.
Underground bunkers tunnels and highways?
I invite The Nation to investigate Welfare fraud.
The Fed is audited. Every year. By an outside public accounting firm.
It'd look even better in the back accounts of the millions of American taxpayers it was stolen from in the first place, before it was pissed away into oblivion.
now audit hhs
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