Unbelievable. Infuriating.

[cali]

Pentagon’s Sloppy Bookkeeping Means $6.5 Trillion Can’t Pass an Audit



The Defense Department over the years has been notorious for its lax accounting practices. The Pentagon has never completed an audit of how they actually spend the trillions of dollars on wars, equipment, personnel, housing, healthcare and procurements.

An increasingly impatient Congress has demanded that the Army achieve “audit readiness” for the first time by Sept. 30, 2017, so that lawmakers can get a better handle on military spending. But Pentagon watchdogs think that may be mission impossible, and for good reason.

A Department of Defense inspector general’s report released last week offered a jaw-dropping insight into just how bad the military’s auditing system is.

The Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the behemoth Indianapolis-based agency that provides finance and accounting services for the Pentagon’s civilian and military members, could not provide adequate documentation for $6.5 trillion worth of year-end adjustments to Army general fund transactions and data.


<snip>

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/07/31/Pentagon-s-Sloppy-Bookkeeping-Means-65-Trillion-Can-t-Pass-Audit

[Dustlawyer]

1. We could fully fund Public Education and infrastructure repair off of what the military

wastes each year without cutting military effectiveness.

[panader0]

3. Yep--

[awoke_in_2003]

25. There's a reason why

Europeans have nice things- we flush too much of our money down the toilet.

[HereSince1628]

2. It's never clear to me that this money is 'lost' vs it's going into 'black projects'.

There have been many similar reports announced for what seems like decades.

Complete and accurate accountings are just as often, if not somewhat more called for, but those accountings are never realized.

[NightWatcher]

4. Remember the $600 hammers and $1000 toilet seats?

They're not going to have a line item that says "money for mustard gas that we used on civilians"
or "bribes for assassinations".

[HereSince1628]

5. Or a few billion, here and there, to buy out leaders of small and medium sized countries.

The defense budget is a very big carpet under which many things can be swept.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. Black projects for sure: Black pockets of fat cats and tax-evading corporations. . . . nt

[mopinko]

11. or outright theft.

richard secord.
stuff comes in the front door, gets stamped as surplus, gets sold out the back door to slimy tin pot dictators and guerrilla movements that we train, and the money goes into some mole's pocket.

[randome]

6. Inconceivable.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Meredith McIver approves of this post.[/center][/font][hr]

[cali]

9. Why? (I'm assuming snark due to the reference(s)

[randome]

10. Yes, just snark. And directed at the Pentagon.

Or maybe that word doesn't mean what I think it means.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Meredith McIver approves of this post.[/center][/font][hr]

[Bernardo de La Paz]

7. Fat Cat Corporate Welfare. Could retire half of Federal debt with this. . . . nt

[frazzled]

12. Oh dear

I hope we take reporting from the right-leaning Fiscal Times with a grain of salt.

The start-up, The Fiscal Times, covers economic issues, with a particular focus on the federal budget, the growing deficit and efforts to rein in health care and Social Security spending. Its financing was provided by Peter G. Peterson, the billionaire investment banker who advocates deficit reduction and restrictions on entitlement programs.

On Dec. 31, The Post published the first news article produced by The Fiscal Times, a report on the support in Washington for a proposed deficit-reduction commission. The primary expert quoted in the article is from the Concord Coalition, whose mission is also balanced budgets and limits on safety-net spending.

But the article did not mention Mr. Peterson, his backing of The Fiscal Times, that he was a co-founder of the Concord Coalition or that his foundation was a major underwriter of the coalition.

A group of mostly liberal policy analysts say the problem is more basic than a lack of transparency — that The Fiscal Times has a built-in bias, so The Post should not publish its work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/business/media/06post.html?_r=0

[MADem]

19. Pentagon overspending is low-hanging fruit. Even wingnuts can get people

from left to right shaking their fist at that topic. It's as sure as springtime--a problem we've had for many, many years, now. It crosses not just administrations, but GENERATIONS.

I'd love to see us get a handle on it. I've been a fan of trying to do just that for a long time, now.

[ToxMarz]

13. Maybe go over to Northern Virginia and you'll see where a lot

of it ended up in the mansions of the defense contractors

[MADem]

14. This problem has only gotten worse down the years.

I don't mean to splash cold water on this idea, because I think it is LONG overdue, but this sort of effort has been tried before. I can remember at least three HUGE pushes to get some accountability in DC, one of the more famous ones after that DOD boondoggle that was memorialized in the HBO film "Pentagon Wars" (anyone who hasn't seen it should take the time and watch--it is an older movie but it is right on the money).

This is the Quadrennial Dance of the Congresscritters, IMO. Sound and fury....


The POTUS who can get a handle on Five-Sided Funny Farm Fraud, Waste and Abuse (FWA) should be given a Nobel Prize--it will be that grand an achievement. Part of the problem is that there's a whole black ops budget included in that pile, and a lot of the FWA gets blamed on that (when it's really just sloppy bookkeeping and even sloppier spending with poor oversight).

Kelsey Grammar may be a wingnut, but he was great in this pic.

[Plucketeer]

15. We already have a POTUS with a Nobel

and the 5-sided place plays him like a fiddle.

[MADem]

17. He doesn't have the Congress on his side and he never has.

It is astounding what he has been able to achieve despite the intransigence and bitter hatred of Tortoiseboy and his crew of mendacious n'er do wells.

The oversight process at the Pentagon, too, runs at a glacial pace but GOP obstruction has made change (never mind hope) difficult in any event.

HRC used to serve on SASC--she knows how those clowns can toss up bullshit mixed with fairy dust and try to blow it in the eyes of those who are determined to get to the bottom of things. She can see it coming a mile away. It should help her to know how that game is played.

[Ilsa]

16. Obama will be blamed for this.

Just watch. Someone will claim the $400 mil to Iran is rolled up in this.

[MADem]

18. Anyone making that claim is a moron, that money was given TO us by the Shah

as a downpayment for weapons/aviation systems that WE never delivered.

I have to laugh at all these ransom accusations--they are utter wingnutty bullshit.

If you have to pay a "ransom," the best way to do it is to use the KIDNAPPER's money, I suppose....!

[Ilsa]

22. I couldn't agree more.

After providing the basics of the history (1979) to some friends online, they still didn't get that it was Iran's money. I had to explain mechanics of the account freeze, and that the Iran deal is helping prevent a war between Iran and Israel, drawing in Russia and Syria.

[awoke_in_2003]

26. Since when has being a moron

stopped them?

[MrScorpio]

20. Stargates and inter-planetary military outposts don't pay for themselves. nt

[Javaman]

21. the largest grift of all time.

lie about what you need the money for, cook the books, make so them so incredibly complicated that no one wants to try and figure them out, laugh all the way to the bank.

[colsohlibgal]

23. Coincidence?

Google Donald Rumsfeld 9/10/01

[MADem]

24. Or "The Six Hundred Ship Navy" or "Star Wars" (Ronald Reagan era).

Talk about money pits!