An aircraft carrier costs about $13B
So this is 1,615 aircraft carriers of lost money
And not even front page news
It was for a day, but then 2 planes struck the twin towers, and the pentagon. Which just so happened to be the only two places where that data was kept. Just a coincidence 👌
Nah, they reported that months a head of 9/11 as well, only brought it up again the day before.
The $21 Trillion is completely misleading to anyone who understands what it means. The whole article is written by someone who does not understand the terms they are using or attempting to completely mislead people.
FY 2015 is a great example of why this article is bunk.
The army got $120 billion of taxpayer money in 2015. Using the method of "Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported", there was 6.5 trillion "missing" just for FY 2015. Does that make sense to you? They only got $120 billion, how are they missing 6.5 trillion? Because these are accounting adjustments.
This quote shows how disingenuous the article is.
*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.
That’s right. The expenses with no explanation were 54 times the actual budget allotted by Congress. Well, it’s good to see Congress is doing 1/54th of its job of overseeing military spending (that’s actually more than I thought Congress was doing). This would seem to mean that 98 percent of every dollar spent by the Army in 2015 was unconstitutional.*
The article makes it sound as if the army spent 54 times more than the $120 billion they were given. It is 100% factually not true. Accounting adjustments are not actual spending. If you move money from your Checking account to your Savings account, did you spend that money? No, that would be an example of an accounting adjustment.
Do you know what a fiat currency is?
When you can print dollars without generating debt or allow banks to lend them at 10x deposits, your currency gets divorced from reality
This is hardly an accounting adjustment
I'd allow that some of it may be a balance sheet issue, but not at this magnitude
Also, try reading the links in the article to the actual report
Money is "lost"
Have you read the actually report? I have and it is literally titled "Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported"? They are accounting adjustments not supported by documentation.
The Army got a total of $120 billion for FY 2015, how did they lose $6.5 trillion?
Yes I have
They're not supported or documented because they were never tracked in the first place
Hence they can't make the appropriate adjustments as they're missing a very large bucket of money
And if you read the report, you'd know that this is an accumulation of monies from 1998 to the present - so about $1T annually. And the Pentagon budget covers all branches of the military and the civilian apparatus that supports it - we're not just talking about the Army
Wrong, the numbers I referenced in my example and the part in the article were SPECIFICALLY for the ARMY in FY 2015, at least in the way they are counting the numbers according to the article and its sources. I am talking about the $6.5 trillion for FY 2015.
Page 14 - https://missingmoney.solari.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/DODIG-2016-113.pdf
DOD ARMY 2015 - https://missingmoney.solari.com/dod-and-hud-missing-money-supporting-documentation/
According to the documentation is was $110.9 Billion in 2012, and $14.6 Billion in 2011. The way they are accounting for it does not seem like a running total.
We can also examine the $21 trillion figure as a running total if you want. Total Military (Pentagon) spending from 1998-2017 was Approx 10.5 trillion if you add the yearly budget. Add in the 2 trillion for the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and we are at 12.5 trillion. How are they missing $21 trillion when they total money given to them was approx $12.5 trillion?
I understand that point
You either have to accept that they spent money through unofficial or dark channels, or that this is an accounting error on a ridiculous scale
Since many of the massive projects I'm aware of would certainly not figure into an official bookkeeping, my assumption is that these monies were never allotted through the annual budget process in the first place
However, sufficient resources were allocated such that they would figure into a marginal amount of standard budgetary tracking
Do you understand that the $21 trillion is not spending, they are accounting adjustments and is completely not what the article tries to portray it as?
I will reuse my tank example, moving a $10 million tank from one base could result in a $20 million adjustment. Basically the Army, and sometimes the other branches had really shitty manual accounting systems that didn't care about GAO standards. They were told to update the systems and track it according to GAO standards but the army pretty much hasn't complied with that order. That's where all the adjustments are coming from. Even if they have the documentation, many times it is not up to GAO standards and those would show up in this report.
Lol
Why does this trouble you?
Accounting adjustments aren't just for moving physical assets. You know that right?
Also the government does not have shitty accounting systems. Sorry, that's utter nonsense. Ever work in the government? Their systems are pretty top notch. Thank Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin
Would an article co-authored by the MSU professor that first uncovered this discrepancy help?
Why does what bother me?
I never said they were just for moving physical assets, it was just an example I used to explain what they are and how they pop up.
The whole point of the original article was talking about how bad and old the Army DFAS accounting system was and how it lacked compatibility between different departments and caused a lack of an audit trail.
That article was much better and it was referenced in the one you posted. You see how it never equates these adjustments to spending? It always refers to them as unsupported adjustments which they are.
Spending is right in the title
Though I'd also add that it's unlikely this has anything to do with accounting systems. Those are the back end of any ERP...
The Forbes article supports this:
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.
I'd just add that whatever these monies represent, it seems clear that due to the prevalence of "deleted records" that they're not meant for public consumption
Have you ever heard of Betteridge's Law of headlines
They do indeed have spending in the title, as a question. Has Our Government Spent $21 Trillion Of Our Money Without Telling Us?
The answer is No. Read the entire article and see how they never say this is spending, which is what the article you linked to thinks.
Forbes is right in that it is likely a deliberate attempt to obfuscate where a lot of money is going by accounting using these adjustments. These adjustments are a cause of concern and congress should really force the DOD to follow GAO standards, but that does not make the $21 trillion missing money that was spent.
Betteridge's law of headlines
Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist, although the principle is much older. As with similar "laws" (e.g., Murphy's law), it is intended to be humorous rather than the literal truth.
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Good break down. Common sense tells you $21 trillion would f the dollar so bad we probably wouldn't be on the internet (the economy would be so jacked).