5 ms·

The Pentagon Can't Account for $21T

53 points by da02 8y ago

some_account 8y ago
Why are people surprised by this? It seems so naive to think they would be upfront with their massive secret, dark projects.
- 6nf 8y ago
  I hope most of the money goes into high tech secret projects but I suspect a lot of it is just paying off dictators with pallets full of cash.
  - mtgx 8y ago
    The whole "military investments have helped tech so much!" is so overhyped. If you had put the same amount of money into research grants, you would've obtained 100x the commercial inventions we eventually got mainly by accident from the military.
    - analognoise 8y ago
      Real tech (hardcore stuff: chips, systems, radios, satellites, supercomputers, etc). If you mean the latest subscription service for cat videos (or "like Uber, but for..." type trash) then no, the military doesn't help with those things.
      - petra 8y ago
        To be fair, OP talked about research grants , not VC for crap.
- maxander 8y ago
  Because trillion. If that’s true, that’s not just some extra secret projects to break all encryption and build a secret moonbase- it would mean that the US government was secretly printing a quantity of cash roughly equal to its own GDP, indicating that the dollar would be worth a fraction of its apparent value (if anything) and making a total economic collapse of Western civilization a virtual necessity. It merits a bit of surprise. However, looking into the .gov report where they’re getting this from, it looks like the “21 trillion” figure is the total of all adjustments both up and down, to any part of the budget sheet- sloppy accounting is being done, but the net “adjustment” (the amount of money being unilaterally summoned from unclear sources due to Pentagon malarkey) is merely (!) in the hundred-millions or billions.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
archgoon 8y ago
The pentagon's budget is only[1][2] about 600 billion dollars a year, over the 17 year period. This is saying they can't account for over 35 years of budget. I don't understand how this number can possibly be correct in the sense that it's being presented. The article doesn't really explain it, can someone explain how the numbers add up? Is the Pentagon running a hedge fun in the background along with it's funding from congress? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... [2] I don't typically use the word 'only' to describe the US military budget.
- rosser 8y ago
  Opening paragraph of The Fine Article's linked Forbes source: > 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." [1] This isn't actually necessarily money that's been spent illegitimately or secretly, or something. It sounds more like sloppy bookkeeping. Note also that the author also writes for RT. It doesn't make him wrong, but it does invite scrutiny into the underlying narratives this piece was penned to support; they probably aren't just on the level of "Army bad at accounting." [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-government-spent-21-trillion-of-our-money-without-telling-us/#134b46da7aef https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-go...
- exergy 8y ago
  Except that it does. He mentions that the budget is the official budget, ie the on paper budget. The unaccounted for spending is 54 times that amount. It's just not on the papers
- DavidSJ 8y ago
manav 8y ago
Stargate program.
timavr 8y ago
I hope they are building space ships to protect against incoming alien invasion which they discovered via time machine they built 10 years ago.
brd529 8y ago
The tone and vulgar word choices of the article undermine its credibility. I’m glad they did because it inspired me to google the issue. Second result debunks it: https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-missing-21-trillion-6-5-trillion-2-3-trillion-journal-vouchers.t9718/ https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-missing-21-trillion-6-5-tr... Per the DOD comptroller, the unsupported journal adjustments are a technical accounting term > when the military has to make quarterly or year-end financial statements, some entries, like the value of certain assets (like aircraft carriers) or liabilities (like pensions), have to be transferred either manually or by an automated but uncertified system. Because of this it's marked as "unsupported" because it lacks a rigorous audit trail. But it's not missing. It's just a long list of entries, like the value of the Navy's ships, that don't meet proper accounting standards
- jabgrabdthrow 8y ago
  It’s the military and it’s tax money. “Manually transferred” or “unsupported” or “doesn’t meet proper accounting standards” doesn’t debunk “can’t account for”, it directly supports that point!
- 3131s 8y ago
  This article is terrible, but there are much better sources: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army/u-s-army-fudged-its-accounts-by-trillions-of-dollars-auditor-finds-idUSKCN10U1IG https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army/u-s-army-f... https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-government-spent-21-trillion-of-our-money-without-telling-us/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-go... "The Defense Department’s Inspector General, in a June report, said the Army made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. Yet the Army lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up." The total of 21 trillion includes "adjustments" made by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in addition to branches of the Pentagon.
fharper1961 8y ago
For a some explanations of what happened: https://www.metabunk.org/explained-6-5-trillion-unsupported-and-undocumented-in-2015-financial-statement.t7845/ https://www.metabunk.org/explained-6-5-trillion-unsupported-...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

53 points by da02 8y ago

Why are people surprised by this? It seems so naive to think they would be upfront with their massive secret, dark projects.

6nf 8y ago
I hope most of the money goes into high tech secret projects but I suspect a lot of it is just paying off dictators with pallets full of cash.
- mtgx 8y ago
  The whole "military investments have helped tech so much!" is so overhyped. If you had put the same amount of money into research grants, you would've obtained 100x the commercial inventions we eventually got mainly by accident from the military.
  - analognoise 8y ago
    Real tech (hardcore stuff: chips, systems, radios, satellites, supercomputers, etc). If you mean the latest subscription service for cat videos (or "like Uber, but for..." type trash) then no, the military doesn't help with those things.
    - petra 8y ago
      To be fair, OP talked about research grants , not VC for crap.
maxander 8y ago
Because trillion. If that’s true, that’s not just some extra secret projects to break all encryption and build a secret moonbase- it would mean that the US government was secretly printing a quantity of cash roughly equal to its own GDP, indicating that the dollar would be worth a fraction of its apparent value (if anything) and making a total economic collapse of Western civilization a virtual necessity. It merits a bit of surprise. However, looking into the .gov report where they’re getting this from, it looks like the “21 trillion” figure is the total of all adjustments both up and down, to any part of the budget sheet- sloppy accounting is being done, but the net “adjustment” (the amount of money being unilaterally summoned from unclear sources due to Pentagon malarkey) is merely (!) in the hundred-millions or billions.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

archgoon 8y ago

The pentagon's budget is only[1][2] about 600 billion dollars a year, over the 17 year period. This is saying they can't account for over 35 years of budget. I don't understand how this number can possibly be correct in the sense that it's being presented. The article doesn't really explain it, can someone explain how the numbers add up? Is the Pentagon running a hedge fun in the background along with it's funding from congress? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... [2] I don't typically use the word 'only' to describe the US military budget.

rosser 8y ago
Opening paragraph of The Fine Article's linked Forbes source: > 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." [1] This isn't actually necessarily money that's been spent illegitimately or secretly, or something. It sounds more like sloppy bookkeeping. Note also that the author also writes for RT. It doesn't make him wrong, but it does invite scrutiny into the underlying narratives this piece was penned to support; they probably aren't just on the level of "Army bad at accounting." [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-government-spent-21-trillion-of-our-money-without-telling-us/#134b46da7aef https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-go...
exergy 8y ago
Except that it does. He mentions that the budget is the official budget, ie the on paper budget. The unaccounted for spending is 54 times that amount. It's just not on the papers
DavidSJ 8y ago

manav 8y ago

Stargate program.

timavr 8y ago

I hope they are building space ships to protect against incoming alien invasion which they discovered via time machine they built 10 years ago.

brd529 8y ago

The tone and vulgar word choices of the article undermine its credibility. I’m glad they did because it inspired me to google the issue. Second result debunks it: https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-missing-21-trillion-6-5-trillion-2-3-trillion-journal-vouchers.t9718/ https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-missing-21-trillion-6-5-tr... Per the DOD comptroller, the unsupported journal adjustments are a technical accounting term > when the military has to make quarterly or year-end financial statements, some entries, like the value of certain assets (like aircraft carriers) or liabilities (like pensions), have to be transferred either manually or by an automated but uncertified system. Because of this it's marked as "unsupported" because it lacks a rigorous audit trail. But it's not missing. It's just a long list of entries, like the value of the Navy's ships, that don't meet proper accounting standards

jabgrabdthrow 8y ago
It’s the military and it’s tax money. “Manually transferred” or “unsupported” or “doesn’t meet proper accounting standards” doesn’t debunk “can’t account for”, it directly supports that point!
3131s 8y ago
This article is terrible, but there are much better sources: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army/u-s-army-fudged-its-accounts-by-trillions-of-dollars-auditor-finds-idUSKCN10U1IG https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army/u-s-army-f... https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-government-spent-21-trillion-of-our-money-without-telling-us/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-go... "The Defense Department’s Inspector General, in a June report, said the Army made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. Yet the Army lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up." The total of 21 trillion includes "adjustments" made by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in addition to branches of the Pentagon.

fharper1961 8y ago

For a some explanations of what happened: https://www.metabunk.org/explained-6-5-trillion-unsupported-and-undocumented-in-2015-financial-statement.t7845/ https://www.metabunk.org/explained-6-5-trillion-unsupported-...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]