9th Marines

Some of you may have read this piece from Fiscal Times. Because of its importance, at least to me, it is copied in its entirety. A short, but significant read.


With $8.5 Trillion Unaccounted for, Why Should Congress Increase the Defense Budget? - See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/

BY JACQUELINE LEO AND BRIANNA EHLEY, The Fiscal Times March 19, 2015

The U.S. military is good at fighting wars, but it sucks at managing money. Partly because of its convoluted bookkeeping systems, $8.5 trillion—yes, trillion—taxpayer dollars doled out by Congress since 1996 has never been accounted for. That was also the first year that Congress passed a law requiring the Defense Department to be audited, which it has failed to do. In 2009, Congress passed another law requiring the DOD to be audit-ready by 2017. 

After spending—no wasting—billions on failed accounting software, the department is likely to miss that deadline, too. 
So how does the military handle their books for the U.S. Treasury department?  They c***t.

A scathing investigative report by Reuters in November 2013 described how an accountant at DOD in Cleveland would face the same monthly problem: Missing numbers, wrong numbers -- numbers with no explanation of where they came from or what they were for. To rectify the problem, the accountant was instructed to “plug” in false numbers in the DOD’s books.

How can an agency known for superior strategic planning on the battlefield be so incompetent on the home front? Is it arrogance? Sloppiness? Or simply a misplaced disregard for what their lack of discipline is costing the country. 

As Reuters reported, a 14-year supply or 15,000 "vehicular control arms" of the military's Humvees were in stock as of November 2008. Yet, from 2010 through 2012, the agency bought 7,437 more of them -- at prices considerably higher than it paid for the thousands sitting on its shelves.  

More recently, we have sadly reported just a few of the mounting accounting problems at the Pentagon:

Pentagon Spends $1 Billion Destroying $16 Billion of Ammo. DOD purchased $16 billion worth of ammunition that it didn’t actually need, according to a Government Accountability Office investigation that found much of the ammo became “obsolete, unusable or their use is banned by international treaty.”

$80 Million “Iron Man” Suit for Soldiers That Might Not Work. The DOD is pouring millions into a wearable weapon it calls the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) otherwise known as the “Iron Man” suit. It has a budget so far of $80 million in order to create a suit of armor that soldiers can wear while also being able to carry hundreds of pounds of gear Some scientists are already skeptical and say soldiers would never be able to move around in the heavy armor—let alone carry anything else.

$300 Million a Year Unaccounted for in Afghanistan. In the latest example of lax oversight, a blistering new report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reveals the Pentagon isn’t keeping sufficient tabs on the $300 million in tax dollars each year that are supposed to help fund the payroll of the Afghan National Police (ANP).

U.S. Weapons Worth $500 Million Vanish in Yemen. Pentagon officials cannot track the whereabouts of $500 million worth of military equipment the U.S. donated to Yemen since 2007 – raising alarms that the hardware may have ended up with al-Qaeda or Iranian-backed rebels.

1 Billion Pad for Loose Bolts and Damaged Aircraft. It’s bad enough that federal contractors hired to perform routine maintenance work on Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) airplanes dodged their work hours and shirked important safety requirements. It’s even worse that they overcharged the federal government hundreds of millions of dollars for their “work” – and agency officials didn’t notice any of it.

$700 Million for Afghan Gem Cutters. The Taskforce for Business and Stability Operations, formed in 2010, was supposed to reduce unemployment and fostering economic growth in Afghanistan. But management issues and lax oversight are hampering its effectiveness--leaving millions of tax dollars vulnerable to waste.

Pentagon Didn’t Report $145 Million in Improper Payments. The Defense Department’s Inspector General estimated that had these claims been included in DoD’s report, the actual amount of improper payments would be closer to about $213 million, or $145 million higher than DoD’s estimate.

Pentagon Scraps 16 Planes Worth $500 Million for Mere $32K. After spending nearly half a billion dollars on 20 planes to outfit the Afghan Air Force, the Defense Department turned around and scrapped 16 of the aircraft for 6 cents on the pound—just $32,000, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has learned.

$900 Million More in Outrageous Military Spending. In the latest blow to the program, the Government Accountability Office released a scathing review of newly built ships that just joined the fleet—ships that together cost nearly $900 million more than originally estimated.

What should Congress do?  Continue to blithely increase the defense budget when the department can’t handle money?  Call in Ernst and Young to do it for them?  Or simply tell them they won’t get another red cent until they figure out how to add and subtract. 

At a time when the country is facing entitlement cuts and desperately trying to not just repair but invest in new state of the art infrastructure, shouldn’t the agency with the largest federal budget justify what it spends and why? At the very least, if DOD doesn’t pass an audit, it should be penalized—just like you and me.

America Only Loc: From the right hand of God

I bet some of that money is sitting in off shore banks, and most recently some is in an account that says Kenyan Barry as the account owner.

There should be NO more increase of any spending budgets at all. Everyone in the capital is guilty of being a crook. But the head crook needs to be impeached, prosecuted for treason and then executed for his guilt.

9th Marines

I would imagine there are a lot of high ranking military personnel, high GS DOD personnel, and former members of Congress who are complicit in this boondoggle. In 1961 Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex and it has only grown since then. Thanks for taking the time to read.

She Wolf Loc: Currently Georgia

Just another example of easily you can stop the people from questioning you using fear. The monies paid into this budget should stop immediately until every last cent is accounted for.

mwdegutis Loc: Illinois

With time and space being important, I'll keep this brief...According to whitehouse.gov, a “very trusted” source, there have been/will be $9.2 trillion in budgeted outlays by the Department of Defense from 1996 to the end of 2015. So you’re telling me over 92 percent of that budget is unaccounted for?

MrEd Loc: Georgia

One thing you have to remember is the way Congress forces the military to spend money. They are given so much for each quarter and if they don't spend it, then Congress cuts their throat on the next budget. I have see quite a lot of this while i was in and it is always the same. Spend the money or get your budget cut. Congress would cot that budget so much that the military could not keep up with training demands.

I have see what happens when they run out of money. We had a battery that had to go out in the field that ran out of money. Instead of taking the 105mm because they couldn't buy gas, they took the 4.2" morter in a jeep trailer and hand pulled them 15 miles out into the field so they could do their shooting for the quarter.

9th Marines

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