Pentagon can't account for $21 trillion, up from $6.5 trillion (UPDATED W/ REAL ARTICLE -- POST #66)

[GSP_37]

I hope it's from building our own UFO spaceships and not from corruption.

 

[Rhood]

Too many politicians started sticking their hands in the cookie jar once they found out how profitable war was by money laundering tax payer dollars.
Once Saudi Arabia and Israel got involved with bribing the US government into starting unecessary wars, accountability for military spending flew right out the window.

 

[MikeMcMann]

I agree we should have much better systems for meeting accounting requirements. I can also almost imagine what that would take (at least, I understand the scope of this), and it's a monumental challenge. Nobody has figured out how to fix it. The Pentagon has access to the best minds in the world. It has become a priority. So, I expect that we will do what we can. But I also expect that people will continue to make outrageous claims of corruption where none exists, especially when garbage fuck journalists are writing such garbage fucking articles about it.

I am sorry but i don't believe for a minute they want systems that could keep them accountable. I believe the inefficiency is part of the plan. Walmart would not accept that and they don't have the best minds.

Keeping books is not rocket science and if they wanted it fixed it would be. If they had the equivalent of the US gov't telling them (like the US gov't tells corporations) that you either fix it or we end you, it would be fixed.

we have the same thing here in Canada to a lesser extent with the Ontario gov't health records billion dollar debacles. They handle less data probably than Facebook but are completely useless at it. Its by design.

 

[Fawlty]

I am sorry but i don't believe for a minute they want systems that could keep them accountable. I believe the inefficiency is part of the plan. Walmart would not accept that and they don't have the best minds.

Keeping books is not rocket science and if they wanted it fixed it would be. If they had the equivalent of the US gov't telling them (like the US gov't tells corporations) that you either fix it or we end you, it would be fixed.

we have the same thing here in Canada to a lesser extent with the Ontario gov't health records billion dollar debacles. They handle less data probably than Facebook but are completely useless at it. Its by design.

I don't know what this "they" is supposed to be. Everybody uses the accounting systems, and all of them are faulty.

Keeping books for the largest organization in world history, especially military assets, is harder than people want to believe.

 

[MadSquabbles500]

Hopefully this is just a typo of too many zeros, or they forget to put in the period dot, or the period dot got faded in the all the copying. Each copies tends to be lighter and lighter in the ink.

 

[JosephDredd]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlik...of-our-money-without-telling-us/#63892dd37aef

Has Our Government Spent $21 Trillion Of Our Money Without Telling Us?


I am co-authoring this column with Mark Skidmore, a Professor of Economics at Michigan State University.

“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.” ~ Article I, Section 9, Clause 7, The US Constitution

On July 26, 2016, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a report “Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported”. The report indicates that for fiscal year 2015 the Army failed to provide adequate support for $6.5 trillion in journal voucher adjustments. According to the GAO's Comptroller General, "Journal vouchers are summary-level accounting adjustments made when balances between systems cannot be reconciled. Often these journal vouchers are unsupported, meaning they lack supporting documentation to justify the adjustment or are not tied to specific accounting transactions…. For an auditor, journal vouchers are a red flag for transactions not being captured, reported, or summarized correctly."

(Note, after Mark Skidmore began inquiring about OIG-reported unsubstantiated adjustments, the OIG's webpage, which documented, albeit in a highly incomplete manner, these unsupported "accounting adjustments," was mysteriously taken down. Fortunately, Mark copied the July 2016 report and all other relevant OIG-reports in advance and reposted them here. Mark has repeatedly tried to contact Lorin Venable, Assistant Inspector General at the Office of the Inspector General. He has emailed, phoned, and used LinkedIn to ask Ms. Venable about OIG's disclosure of unsubstantiated adjustments, but she has not responded.)

Given that the entire Army budget in fiscal year 2015 was $120 billion, unsupported adjustments were 54 times the level of spending authorized by Congress. The July 2016 report indicates that unsupported adjustments are the result of the Defense Department's "failure to correct system deficiencies." The result, according to the report, is that data used to prepare the year-end financial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit trail. The report indicates that just 170 transactions accounted for $2.1 trillion in year—end unsupported adjustments. No information is given about these 170 transactions. In addition many thousands of transactions with unsubstantiated adjustments were, according to the report, removed by the Army. There is no explanation concerning why they were removed nor their magnitude. The July 2016 report states, "In addition, DFAS (Defense Finance and Accounting Service) Indianapolis personnel did not document or support why DDRS (The Defense Department Reporting System) removed at least 16,513 of 1.3 million feeder file records during the Third Quarter."

An appendix to the July 2016 report shows $2 trillion in changes to the Army General Fund balance sheet due to unsupported adjustments. On the asset side, there is $794 billion increase in the Army's Fund Balance with the U.S. Treasury. There is also an increase of $929 billion in the Army's Accounts Payable. This information raises additional major questions. First, what is the source of the additional $794 billion in the Army's Fund Balance? This adjustment represents more than six times appropriated spending. Second, do these transfers represent a flow of funds to the Army beyond those authorized by Congress? Third, were these funds authorized and if so when and by whom? Fourth, what is the source of these funds? Finally, the $929 billion in Accounts Payable appears to represent an amount owed for items or services purchased on credit. What entities have received or will receive payment?

The July 2016 report is not the only such report of unsubstantiated adjustments. Mark Skidmore and Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, conducted a search of government websites and found similar reports dating back to 1998. While the documents are incomplete, original government sources indicate $21 trillion in unsupported adjustments have been reported for the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015.

While government budgets can be complex, our government, like any business, can track receipts and payments and share this information in ways that can be understood by the public. The ongoing occurrence and gargantuan nature of unsupported, i.e., undocumented, U.S. federal government expenditures as well as sources of funding for these expenditures should be a great concern to all tax payers.

Taken together these reports point to a failure to comply with basic Constitutional and legislative requirements for spending and disclosure. We urge the House and Senate Budget Committee to initiate immediate investigations of unaccounted federal expenditures as well as the source of their payment.

PS, On December 11, 2017 we learned that the key documents had been reposted on the OIG website, but with different URLs. On October 5, 2017 we discovered that the link to the report “Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported” had been disabled. Within a several days, the links to other OIG documents we identified in our search were also disabled. The sequential non-random nature of this disabling process suggests a purposeful decision on the part of OIG to make key documents unavailable to the public via the website, as opposed to website reorganization, etc. We also revisited the website intermittently to see whether the documents had been reposted under different URLs—until very recently they had not been reposted. The OIG link to the most report “Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported”, which indicates $6.5 trillion in unsupported adjustments, can now be found here: We are currently searching the OIG website for the other reports and will share the links here once we have completed the search.

Here's a real article by one of the people who uncovered this mess and I emboldened the interesting tidbits. I'm Putting it up for people who didn't appreciate the shitposty article in the OP. @Fawlty @PolishHeadlock

 

[Fawlty]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlik...of-our-money-without-telling-us/#63892dd37aef



Here's a real article by one of the people who uncovered this mess and I emboldened the interesting tidbits. I'm Putting it up for people who didn't appreciate the shitposty article in the OP. @Fawlty @PolishHeadlock

So their accounts payable adjusted up by 929B in 2015, and their fund balance up by 794B. I do not know if that nets out to the difference, or how much (if any) of the difference would be "lost" money. But I'm sure the accountants will tell us.

It's worth noting that it doesn't matter at all that the numbers are higher than the budget. The writer of that article seems not to have bothered mentioning that. Dunno if ignorance or shit ethics.

 

[PolishHeadlock]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlik...of-our-money-without-telling-us/#63892dd37aef



Here's a real article by one of the people who uncovered this mess and I emboldened the interesting tidbits. I'm Putting it up for people who didn't appreciate the shitposty article in the OP. @Fawlty @PolishHeadlock

I'm not that interested in the topic to be honest.

But at an economic level let's look at the budget per year against the workforce

How much would it cost to the fund the DOD workforce when it comes to salary, healthcare, retirement and "GI" benefits?

Now let's talk on asset procurements along with travel budgets along with maintaining bases across the globe.

Now let's talk on R&D for new weapons (some that come to fruition and others that are abandoned).

Does the DOD suck at accounting? Yes

Is there $21 T missing with no way to figure out how it was spent on a macro level,

No.

Their accounting sucks and they should get better at it.

Outside of that realization what is the point? Cut military spending? Privatize it?

 

[HomeCheese]

In my mind when I hear the term "fake news" I think of the under reporting on important stories like this. What will get more ink: A guy getting pulled off a United Airlines flight or this story. Or The EPA boss who spent too much remodeling his office and getting a sound proof room put in or this story of unaccounted for trillions?

The press is lazy and very hesitant to cover a story like this.

 

[PolishHeadlock]

I'm not that interested in the topic to be honest.

But at an economic level let's look at the budget per year against the workforce

How much would it cost to the fund the DOD workforce when it comes to salary, healthcare, retirement and "GI" benefits?

Now let's talk on asset procurements along with travel budgets along with maintaining bases across the globe.

Now let's talk on R&D for new weapons (some that come to fruition and others that are abandoned).

Does the DOD suck at accounting? Yes

Is there $21 T missing with no way to figure out how it was spent on a macro level,

No.

Their accounting sucks and they should get better at it.

Outside of that realization what is the point? Cut military spending? Privatize it?

@kpt018 can probably give a better answer than me. I'm a tax guy so that's what I analyze.

@kpt018 seems to be closer to the actual books

 

[D3thr0n3d K1ng]

'Guys we cant do an accurate audit because our system is too big, there are too many discrepancies, the audit would cost too much and our accounting software is too old'

'We would like to have more money allocated to our budget next year to address this-thank you'

 

[HunterSdVa29]

@HunterSdVa29 would you venture to guess on the average amount the DOD spend on one their 3.2M employees in regards to salary, healthcare, bonuses, GI Bill type shit, retirement benefits and payroll taxes?

Is $100k per employee out of line as an overall average?

I know what that exact info is for me, civilian employees get an annual net statement of compensation w/ all that info.
Mine isn't that high, and I imagine active duty numbers would be lower for most, except obviously Tricare which i have no idea how to even measure that b/c it's not a normal Employee/employer share payment

only roughly 17% of military actually 'retires' either by 20+ year service or medical retirements (which obviously increased drastically recently due to GWOT), so the retirement benefits are essentially 0 for the vast majority of active duty and reserve people....

I don't know what percentage of DoD civilian employees retire, i imagine it's higher, but theres also mad guys that are already retired from the military so might not work long enough to retire again. But our pension is nothing like the 50% base pay the military gets, it's relatively paltry and the winner is the 401k match (GS uses the TSP in lieu)

edit: when i was on the GI Bill actively receiving BAH, it was most definitely over 100K, but that's only paid while you're actively using it and for 36 months max
I'd guess around 60-70, mainly b/c most people's salary is pretty low but i'm not sure how to figure Tricare in, so it could be 100 for all i know

 

[PEB]

I remember this when it came up before. The language can potentially leave readers with a false impression. It’s not saying that there was 21 trillion in improper spending but rather that the accounting systems haven’t been in place to track the spending. No doubt an amount, maybe even a significant amount, is illegitimate but it’s likely the vast majority of the spending was precisely what it purported to be (much as I would like to believe there’s some vast pot of gold larger than the entire US economy)

The federal reserve prints money like it''s going out of style. Bank Of America had 75 trillion of derivatives dump on the US taxpayer. That puts like 7.5 trillion of responsibility on the taxpayer. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekin...atives-on-u-s-taxpayers-with-federal-approval

 

[spamking]

Oracle is fine but they probably use the oldest version lol.

Also lord only knows how many different instances of Oracle they have and what they use to consolidate it.

True. And I think several applications that they're using are Java-based . . .

 

[kpt018]

@kpt018 can probably give a better answer than me. I'm a tax guy so that's what I analyze.

@kpt018 seems to be closer to the actual books

I'm a controller (CPA) for a $200m + CPG company and have a good handle on our employee costs (obviously, I'd suck if I didn't) but government institutions look very different from that standpoint due to pension costs, which are a huge part of their compensation and are pretty complicated to calculate. I certainly have the expertise and experience to work through and interpret the numbers but I haven't looked.

 

[Rational Poster]

I expect this or I want my money back.