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.
@@@
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 ...
So, any thoughts on how a trillion dollars would appear and disappear every year, year after year? It seems like it would have to show up somewhere.
My suspicion is that this is a slush fund type operation used to pay off Congress critters . . . remembering past warnings about the military industrial complex. I firmly believe that those well placed in government are stealing us blind.
Working on that alien stuff isn’t cheap ya know.
I vote for that!
Are you talking about the Pentagon or the Fed? I haven't heard that about the Fed.
As to the Pentagon, from everything I've heard the record keeping is a huge mess and they simply don't have the systems in place to track all of the activity agency-wide.
That's changing as they invest in accounting infrastructure, and this first attempt at a real audit is a good start.
Everyone knew that the audit would reveal lots of holes, but I haven't seen any accusations of wrongdoing.
But they are losing more than their entire budget, at least in those years. That makes it sound like they were a conduit for some other purpose.
And that much money funneled through them would have to be “printed” or generated by the Fed. There won’t be any accusations of wrongdoing because that level of money disappearing has to be authorized by the top, for no doubt some ostensibly national security purpose. Year after year. This isn’t a rogue general padding his retirement.
On the one hand, the comparisons of the $21 trillion with a single year of anything (as the article does with annual federal budget and the annual GDP) is an apples and oranges type comparison. A figure reprsenting something accumulated over 17 years is never figure compared one-to-one with a figure from a single year.
On the other had, if you averge the total $21 trillion over the 17 years, it represents $1.2 trillion a year, which is more than the DOD officially spent in any of the 17 years covered in the analysis.
How many ways can you say “waste” and why is the GOP always afraid to attack that waste, as if they were attacking “defense”? In reality the GOP is as afraid to fight the DOD on waste as they are to fight the media on its political agendas.
Thanks Everett
Important to remember the Pentagon's been part of the swamp for decades... liberals, criminals, liars, posers and thugs...
How about an audit of Obama’s trillion dollar stimulus package back in 2009?
They are “losing” more than their entire budget in some years. You can’t lose a trillion accidently.
That are not losing it, they are acting as a conduit.
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
Since the Founding States gave the “power of the purse” uniquely to the House of Representatives (1.7.1), the House is constitutionally obligated to take full responsibility for all fraud dealing with taxpayer money imo.
Article I, Section 7, Clause 1: All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
In fact, one check that the Founding States established for House’s power of the purse was to give ordinary voters the power to elect representatives every two years.
Article I, Section 2, Clause 1: The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
Another check that the Founding States established for the House’s power to originate tax appropriation bills was to give the power to vote for federal senators uniquely to the state legislatures. The idea was for senators to protect their states by killing bills that not only steal state powers, but also steal state revenues uniquely associated with those powers, state revenues stolen by means of unconstitutional federal taxes.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States."—Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
However, the 17th Amendment destroyed that safeguard by giving ordinary, low-information voters the power to elect senators.
The Founding States had also constitutionally obligated Congress to publish receipts and expenditures of public money, but who knew?
"Article I, Section 9, Clause 7: No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time [emphasis added]."
On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson gave us the first evidence constitutional checks on the House’s power of the purse would probably fail.
“Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature.” - Thomas Jefferson (Letter to Edward Carrington January 16, 1787)
You’ve come a long way baby! /sarc
I keep thinking about the fact that they are “losing” more than the entire Pentagon budget, year after year... sometimes double or triple the Pentagon budget, year after year.
If it was a few billions, I’d assume they were padding someone’s retirement account. But this is trillions per year over decades starting, we don’t know when.
They are funding some kind of off-budget project that is bigger than the Pentagon. Any ideas what that might be?
That much money missing every year, I don’t believe its tax money. They would have to be printing it.
A professor from Michigan State and some grad assistants did this very same thing last year. I wonder if they’re all still alive. And I wonder if The Nation is plagiarizing their work.
Didn’t Eisenhower warn the country of the military industrial complex?
I don't think they're losing it. I think the screwy numbers are mostly an artifact of the kinds of arcane accounting practices you see at the Pentagon.
Some of it is understandable when they're running an immense bureaucracy, with huge multi-year programs, but having to deal with year-by-year appropriations coming from Congress. It's been even worse the last decade as Congress wasn't passing budgets but instead funding everything via CRs.
Most of the discrepancies seem to be shifting money from annual to long-term accounts, and back, which makes the real picture very opaque but not necessarily corrupt.
"...does not contend that all of this $21 trillion was secret or misused funding. And indeed, the plugs are found on both the positive and the negative sides of the ledger, thus potentially netting each other out. But the Pentagon’s bookkeeping is so obtuse, Skidmore and Fitts added, that it is impossible to trace the actual sources and destinations of the $21 trillion."
That funds your black budget projects.
People have lost their lives trying to fix it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.