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Exclusive: The Pentagon’s Massive Accounting Fraud Exposed ($21 trillion)
The Nation ^

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 ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
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To: RushIsMyTeddyBear

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.


21 posted on 11/30/2018 8:36:29 AM PST by Liz (Our side has 8 trillion bullets; the other side doesn't know which bathroom to use.)
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To: TigerClaws

Find $20 billion for a wall in all of that..........


22 posted on 11/30/2018 8:39:29 AM PST by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizen Means Born Here of Citizen Parents__Know Islam, No Peace - No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: TigerClaws

“The Nation” is not to be taken at face value; it is an outlet for fake news and leftist propaganda.


23 posted on 11/30/2018 8:40:43 AM PST by NorthMountain (... the right of the peopIe to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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To: marron

Bush, Clinton , Bush, Usurper

Daddy Bush started US on the road to becoming North Mexico.


24 posted on 11/30/2018 8:41:00 AM PST by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizen Means Born Here of Citizen Parents__Know Islam, No Peace - No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: Democrats hate too much

Goes back to 1998. This looks like a government within a government.


25 posted on 11/30/2018 8:41:14 AM PST by RinaseaofDs
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To: TigerClaws
the Pentagon receives 54 cents out of every dollar in federal appropriations

That's a dishonest bookkeeping trick. It willfully and dishonestly disregards Social Security, Medicare, and the various other welfare programs.

26 posted on 11/30/2018 8:41:53 AM PST by NorthMountain (... the right of the peopIe to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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To: TigerClaws
I left the Pentagon last Spring. If you cut them off to only a maintenance budget for normal operations until they fix it, it will get fixed swiftly.

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.

27 posted on 11/30/2018 8:42:06 AM PST by Salvavida
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To: TigerClaws

President Trump really should freeze the Pentagon’s budget until a proper audit is completed.


28 posted on 11/30/2018 8:43:38 AM PST by dinodino
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To: marron
It isn’t just the Pentagon that needs to be audited. Try the Federal Reserve. That money had to be printed or at least invented in cyber-dollars.

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.

29 posted on 11/30/2018 8:48:19 AM PST by PGR88
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To: Red Badger

Wow. In their world, a billion dollars is chump change.


30 posted on 11/30/2018 8:49:04 AM PST by marron
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To: Don Corleone

Yes, and I can also say “no standing armies” (or secret armies) along with our Founders.


31 posted on 11/30/2018 8:49:50 AM PST by Sontagged (TY Lord Jesus for being the Way, the Truth & the Life. Have mercy on those trapped in the Snake Pit!)
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To: TigerClaws

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?


32 posted on 11/30/2018 8:52:06 AM PST by reed13k
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To: TigerClaws

WHAT the ....


33 posted on 11/30/2018 8:55:33 AM PST by silverleaf (A man who kneels for the national anthem doesn't stand for much of anything)
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To: Democrats hate too much

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.


34 posted on 11/30/2018 8:55:35 AM PST by Hostage (Article V (Proud Member of the Deranged Q Fringe))
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To: Lurkinanloomin

20 billion is 2 hundredths of a trillion. Literally, it is nickels on the dollar compared to what is unaccounted for.


35 posted on 11/30/2018 8:56:09 AM PST by RinaseaofDs
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To: Kozak

Underground bunkers tunnels and highways?


36 posted on 11/30/2018 8:56:13 AM PST by silverleaf (A man who kneels for the national anthem doesn't stand for much of anything)
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To: TigerClaws

I invite The Nation to investigate Welfare fraud.


37 posted on 11/30/2018 8:56:48 AM PST by jeffc (The U.S. media are our enemy)
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To: marron
It isn’t just the Pentagon that needs to be audited. Try the Federal Reserve.

The Fed is audited. Every year. By an outside public accounting firm.

Federal Reserve audit reports

38 posted on 11/30/2018 9:02:02 AM PST by semimojo
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To: ealgeone
Wow. 21T would buy a lot of planes, ships and tanks.

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.

39 posted on 11/30/2018 9:06:11 AM PST by Hemingway's Ghost (Spirit of '75)
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To: TigerClaws

now audit hhs


40 posted on 11/30/2018 9:13:23 AM PST by fruser1
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