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Pentagon can't account for 6.5 Trillion in spending (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Rove!
- Start date
NutterButter
Footballguy
You don't say. Yeah, let's increase the military budget.
Amused to Death
Footballguy
One of the reasons we do not need to spend more on the military - let them find the trillions of dollars they have lost. Or at least be held accountable for it.
According to that Reuters investigation:
For two decades, the U.S. military has been unable to submit to an audit, flouting federal law and concealing waste and fraud totaling billions of dollars.
Linda Woodford spent the last 15 years of her career inserting phony numbers in the U.S. Department of Defense’s accounts.
Every month until she retired in 2011, she says, the day came when the Navy would start dumping numbers on the Cleveland, Ohio DFAS…. Using the data they received, Woodford and her fellow accountants there set about preparing monthly reports to square the Navy’s books with the U.S. Treasury’s…. And every month, they encountered the same problem. Numbers were missing. Numbers were clearly wrong. Numbers came with no explanation of how the money had been spent or which congressional appropriation it came from.
According to that Reuters investigation:
For two decades, the U.S. military has been unable to submit to an audit, flouting federal law and concealing waste and fraud totaling billions of dollars.
Linda Woodford spent the last 15 years of her career inserting phony numbers in the U.S. Department of Defense’s accounts.
Every month until she retired in 2011, she says, the day came when the Navy would start dumping numbers on the Cleveland, Ohio DFAS…. Using the data they received, Woodford and her fellow accountants there set about preparing monthly reports to square the Navy’s books with the U.S. Treasury’s…. And every month, they encountered the same problem. Numbers were missing. Numbers were clearly wrong. Numbers came with no explanation of how the money had been spent or which congressional appropriation it came from.
Courtjester
The Town Drunk
Isn't this the plot of Deep Impact?
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Mister CIA
Footballguy
Reconsidering my stance on Sharia Law.
Megaton
Footballguy
Basically a blogger:
MintPress News was founded by Mnar Muhawesh, a broadcast journalism graduate of St. Cloud State University. She began her career as an intern at Minnesota television station KARE and as a freelance journalist. After posting her own work on a blog, in 2011 she decided to launch her own news site.[3]Muhawesh said she believed "our media has failed us very miserably," and spoke of her aspirations for MintPress, citing uninformed public debates around issues like Iran's nuclear capabilities, or intervention in Syria. "We are in a crucial time in American history where most Americans don't know what's going on in the world around them."[1]
MintPress News was founded by Mnar Muhawesh, a broadcast journalism graduate of St. Cloud State University. She began her career as an intern at Minnesota television station KARE and as a freelance journalist. After posting her own work on a blog, in 2011 she decided to launch her own news site.[3]Muhawesh said she believed "our media has failed us very miserably," and spoke of her aspirations for MintPress, citing uninformed public debates around issues like Iran's nuclear capabilities, or intervention in Syria. "We are in a crucial time in American history where most Americans don't know what's going on in the world around them."[1]
Godsbrother
Footballguy
I blame Obama
DallasDMac
Footballguy
Why do they keep saying "the military" rather than DFAS? DFAS sends out the checks. It isn't like the AF is going out and buying jets and bombs and can't account for the money. DFAS is basically an accounting agency that sends out paychecks for active duty, government workers, retirees, etc. This whole article's slant that the services have lost this money is somewhat misleading or, perhaps, slanted towards an agenda.
IC FBGCav
Footballguy
The hoops we have to jump through to just do constuction type work is insane. DFAS knows who gets the money.
Arid Filch
Footballguy
The article seemed too biased to be trusted. The whole defense budget is around 600 million so it must have taken many years to arrive at 6.5 trillion in unaccounted funds. I like when writers shine a light on fraud, waste and abuse but this was a poor effort.
fantasycurse42
Footballguy Jr.
Rounding error, IMO
ShamrockPride
Footballguy
Someone is losing their job for this, right?
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Amused to Death
Footballguy
Decades. This is nothing new and has been brought up many times over the years. I think the actual number floating around now is 8.5T. Although it seems to have been debunked as mostly "accounting errors" and not real missing money.
Doctor Detroit
Please remove your headgear
Well if you want an analogy, the Pentagon are the strippers in this scenario and Congress is the NBA player. With all that money hitting the floor at once, it's hard to keep track of. Glad Congress wants them to count it now, you know...protecting us taxpayers from fraud and all. They're on that wall for us. 
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msommer
Footballguy
Will they make it rain?Well if you want an analogy, the Pentagon are the strippers in this scenario and Congress is the NBA player. With all that money hitting the floor at once, it's hard to keep track of. Glad Congress wants them to count it now, you know...protecting us taxpayers from fraud and all. There on that wall for us.
Doctor Detroit
Please remove your headgear
Well their wives have had them on lockdown for the past few years (sequestration) so they have to go during lunch (MRE's are yummy) when the chicks with the C-section scars and the one leg longer than the other (F-35 program) are working.Will they make it rain?Well if you want an analogy, the Pentagon are the strippers in this scenario and Congress is the NBA player. With all that money hitting the floor at once, it's hard to keep track of. Glad Congress wants them to count it now, you know...protecting us taxpayers from fraud and all. There on that wall for us.
The General
Footballguy
Is this 6.5 trillion American dollars?
Doctor Detroit
Please remove your headgear
The General
Footballguy
TheAristocrat
Footballguy
Never happens in any other part of the government though. So we got that going for us.
Ministry of Pain
Footballguy
For once, Americans need to not be bullied by either party into thinking it's OK to keep funding the military at the rate we have been. There has to be a better way to maintain world order without the entire budget going to military spending.
We're embarrassing ourselves.
We're embarrassing ourselves.
Doctor Detroit
Please remove your headgear
Homeland Security has better bookkeeping but that is the most wasteful government monster since Idaho's Famous Potato Posse of 1926.
Doctor Detroit
Please remove your headgear
TheAristocrat
Footballguy
I'm sure. It's ridiculous to think that the government spends $1 on anything and the public finds $0.50 of value.
mcintyre1
Footballguy
Looks like they must have found about $2.0 Trillion since last year.
The $8.5 Trillion figure is also in this article from 2013, and that explains it as representing the budget the Army had received since 1996, which is the beginning of when they're supposed to have been audited yearly. So basically this is their yearly round of shaming the Army to get auditing in place.
The $8.5 Trillion figure is also in this article from 2013, and that explains it as representing the budget the Army had received since 1996, which is the beginning of when they're supposed to have been audited yearly. So basically this is their yearly round of shaming the Army to get auditing in place.
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When you find out let me/us know. East Europe would be Russian, China would own the south China Sea, and middle East wouldnt be pumping out any oil to allow Americans to drive their suv/truck because it looks cool.
Doctor Detroit
Please remove your headgear
At a micro level government works like a business does. I have a budget every year, I identify programs and equipment 2-3 years out that need replacement, I shop for the ideal system and try to find it competitively priced. At a macro level however is wear it jumps the track. If I need IT work done and it costs $4k to fix it, I have to send to acquisitions. Then they compete it, find the best vendor for the money, and it ends up costing $6200.
Contract employees are making $70k a year in salary, but it costs the government twice that to field the contract. Everything is done within the law, believe me. But the laws are from the 80s when Reagan was throwing money at anything and everything (or even older), and then again when GW Bush set up DHS. There is so much money for companies and contractors that there is no way they are gonna shut that spigot down. Taxpayers lose but business wins, the lobbies win, the rich guy wins, and most importantly the politicians win. Thing is all governments operate in similar fashions, and most of them are infinitely less efficient than we are. Chew on that nugget.
Yeah, same here. Reuters did that one as well. Or maybe it's the same report but updated
Doctor Detroit
Please remove your headgear
Well Rove! did post it, were you expecting any different?
You can find these articles every year, last year it was over $8 trillion. Obviously $8 trillion is not missing, but people need to have faux outrage whenever possible.
TheAristocrat
Footballguy
I get that. So throwing more bad money at any government program is a good thing? I'd do away with DHS in a heartbeat. Unbearably terrible spending. But so are a vast majority of the rest unless you say out loud that you just want to employ louts that couldn't elsewhere.
Ministry of Pain
Footballguy
There are so many guns in this country that most people can protect themselves for the next 20 years while we rebuild America from the inside out and then when our military is finally not holding a 27 game lead in the NL West, we(America) will be in prime position to reload the military with our new infrastructure leading the way and making it even easier to manufacture and stockpile the military at a fraction of its current costs.
Doctor Detroit
Please remove your headgear
Nope, but the guys who make the laws prevent things like that from happening. All these guys want to slash government programs, unless of course that program is a part of their district then they are vehemently against it. Then that guy gets 30 fed jobs delivered to his district the next go round after he assists in getting legislation passed. Then the other politician he supported slips $20 million in pork into a bill, and so on. Congress creates the laws, government follows them.
msommer
Footballguy
And just to spell it out to the slow people in the vack of the class shutting it down would cost a few jobs which would mean the politician doesn't get reelected because he made the gravy train go away
dickey moe
Fingerpicker
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