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"The Pentagon’s first-ever audit discovered major flaws in how it handles IT processes and challenges with its internal tracking databases, but did not discover

"The Pentagon’s first-ever audit discovered major flaws in how it handles IT processes and challenges with its internal tracking databases, but did not discover any major cases of fraud or abuse." The $400M covers 2.7T of assets, and, as the article lists, is less than 1/30th of one percent of the budget audited. So it's not as inefficient an audit as listing a number without context implies.

_jal 7y ago
Again, I chose that article because it is about the best possible lipstick that can be put on that pig. The audit was a farce. From another article, "In fiscal year 2015, for example, Congress appropriated $122 billion for the US Army. Yet DoD financial records for the Army’s 2015 budget included a whopping $6.5 trillion (yes, trillion) in plugs. Most of these plugs “lack[ed] supporting documentation, [...]” “Because of the plugs, there is no auditable way to track Pentagon funding and spending,” explains Asif Khan of the Government Accountability Office" https://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-audit-budget-fraud/ https://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-audit-budget-frau...
- ChrisLomont 7y ago
  I'd believe the former article, since the quote you posted from the latter is far beyond any yearly budget even mathematically possible. You quoted "Yet DoD financial records for the Army’s 2015 budget included a whopping $6.5 trillion (yes, trillion) in plugs." The entire US annual federal budget is on order of 4 trillion. So that number alone is fearmongering. Total DoD annual budget is around $700B. Army is a fraction of that. A significant amount of the money is simply paying the 2.8 million DoD employees, another decent portion is benefits to retirees, another is equipment maintenance and purchases , and none of these are places you can simply lose all or much of the money - employees notice when they don't get paychecks. So the 6.5 trillion in a single year plugs is either nonsense or seriously misreported in the latter article. Another way to see it - the article says Congress allocated $122B on 2015 for Army. At that rate Army would take 60+ years to have 6.5T in funny money floating around, and that only if it was not paying anyone for anything else, and that requires them to get 122B a year for the past 60 years, which they did not (60 years ago total DoD budget budget was ~50B, Army was a small fraction of that). Thus it's easy to see the article is some mix of lying, ignorance, miscounting, multiple counting, or other nonsense. It's mathematically impossible for Army to have misplaced or hidden or defrauded that much money. Care to explain their math while tying it down to actual budget numbers?
  - phonon 7y ago
    I'm guessing those were positive and negative fudge factors. Most cancelled out, but the end result is the footnote level corrections are larger in absolute magnitude than the underlying budget, making it very difficult to parse (imagine if you had so much monkey patching nothing of the original code base remained).
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    If you will believe DoD, and we'll understand if you won't, you'll find the $6.5T figure on page "i" of this document. [0] (click through soon, because they take down these embarrassing reports all the time!) Of course the gigantic figure is nonsense, but that indicts DoD accounting rather than the journalists who've noticed its shabby nature. By producing meaningless numbers, the accountants have completely obscured what's really going on, in violation of Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution. [0] https://media.defense.gov/2016/Jul/26/2001714261/-1/-1/1/DODIG-2016-113.pdf https://media.defense.gov/2016/Jul/26/2001714261/-1/-1/1/DOD...
    - ChrisLomont 7y ago
      Here's a pretty good explanation of why the 6.5T is nonsense when implied that is the amount of fraud. It also tracks the source of these "estimates", noting that they are not what your article implies. Turns out it is double counting and adding future liabilities. https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-missing-21-trillion-6-5-trillion-2-3-trillion-journal-vouchers.9718/ https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-missing-21-trillio...
    - ChrisLomont 7y ago
      And here is the same audit done in 2018, again from the Inspector General (your report was 2016). It's the most recent followup to your report, which is now outdated. Seems the 6.5T must have evaporated. As expected. This is why using simple smell tests to raise suspicion is worth noting. https://media.defense.gov/2019/Jan/08/2002077454/-1/-1/1/UNDERSTANDING%20THE%20RESULTS%20OF%20THE%20AUDIT%20OF%20THE%20DOD%20FY%202018%20FINANCIAL%20STATEMENTS.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2019/Jan/08/2002077454/-1/-1/1/UND...

_jal 7y ago

Again, I chose that article because it is about the best possible lipstick that can be put on that pig. The audit was a farce. From another article, "In fiscal year 2015, for example, Congress appropriated $122 billion for the US Army. Yet DoD financial records for the Army’s 2015 budget included a whopping $6.5 trillion (yes, trillion) in plugs. Most of these plugs “lack[ed] supporting documentation, [...]” “Because of the plugs, there is no auditable way to track Pentagon funding and spending,” explains Asif Khan of the Government Accountability Office" https://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-audit-budget-fraud/ https://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-audit-budget-frau...

ChrisLomont 7y ago
I'd believe the former article, since the quote you posted from the latter is far beyond any yearly budget even mathematically possible. You quoted "Yet DoD financial records for the Army’s 2015 budget included a whopping $6.5 trillion (yes, trillion) in plugs." The entire US annual federal budget is on order of 4 trillion. So that number alone is fearmongering. Total DoD annual budget is around $700B. Army is a fraction of that. A significant amount of the money is simply paying the 2.8 million DoD employees, another decent portion is benefits to retirees, another is equipment maintenance and purchases , and none of these are places you can simply lose all or much of the money - employees notice when they don't get paychecks. So the 6.5 trillion in a single year plugs is either nonsense or seriously misreported in the latter article. Another way to see it - the article says Congress allocated $122B on 2015 for Army. At that rate Army would take 60+ years to have 6.5T in funny money floating around, and that only if it was not paying anyone for anything else, and that requires them to get 122B a year for the past 60 years, which they did not (60 years ago total DoD budget budget was ~50B, Army was a small fraction of that). Thus it's easy to see the article is some mix of lying, ignorance, miscounting, multiple counting, or other nonsense. It's mathematically impossible for Army to have misplaced or hidden or defrauded that much money. Care to explain their math while tying it down to actual budget numbers?
- phonon 7y ago
  I'm guessing those were positive and negative fudge factors. Most cancelled out, but the end result is the footnote level corrections are larger in absolute magnitude than the underlying budget, making it very difficult to parse (imagine if you had so much monkey patching nothing of the original code base remained).
- jessaustin 7y ago
  If you will believe DoD, and we'll understand if you won't, you'll find the $6.5T figure on page "i" of this document. [0] (click through soon, because they take down these embarrassing reports all the time!) Of course the gigantic figure is nonsense, but that indicts DoD accounting rather than the journalists who've noticed its shabby nature. By producing meaningless numbers, the accountants have completely obscured what's really going on, in violation of Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution. [0] https://media.defense.gov/2016/Jul/26/2001714261/-1/-1/1/DODIG-2016-113.pdf https://media.defense.gov/2016/Jul/26/2001714261/-1/-1/1/DOD...
  - ChrisLomont 7y ago
    Here's a pretty good explanation of why the 6.5T is nonsense when implied that is the amount of fraud. It also tracks the source of these "estimates", noting that they are not what your article implies. Turns out it is double counting and adding future liabilities. https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-missing-21-trillion-6-5-trillion-2-3-trillion-journal-vouchers.9718/ https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-missing-21-trillio...
  - ChrisLomont 7y ago
    And here is the same audit done in 2018, again from the Inspector General (your report was 2016). It's the most recent followup to your report, which is now outdated. Seems the 6.5T must have evaporated. As expected. This is why using simple smell tests to raise suspicion is worth noting. https://media.defense.gov/2019/Jan/08/2002077454/-1/-1/1/UNDERSTANDING%20THE%20RESULTS%20OF%20THE%20AUDIT%20OF%20THE%20DOD%20FY%202018%20FINANCIAL%20STATEMENTS.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2019/Jan/08/2002077454/-1/-1/1/UND...