If it were revealed the Pentagon could not account for, say, hmm, $8.5 trillion -- an amount so massive it equals half the national deficit -- wouldn't the nation rise its collective head and say, "What?"
Wouldn't there be a major Congressional inquiry, the likes of which we've seldom seen? Wouldn't the newscasts follow developments day to day as we tried to account for where the money has gone?
Apparently not. The story came out in November. I'd say it "broke" in November, but I'm not sure it got that much attention. I don't remember it.
Let's run the number by you, again: $8.5 trillion since 1996, which compares to a national deficit of $17.5 trillion. If we don't know where this money has gone, isn't there a chance some of it might have been absonded with some of it? Maybe not, but we surely should at least be anxious to assure ourselves that has not happened.
The Pentagon was suppose to start accounting for its spending in 1996. That is when it was first suppose to have been audited. Every other federal agency, I'm told, is audited. But not the Pentagon.
And, Congress has not done anything about it.
Not only has there not been a Congressional inquiry, nothing has been done to account for the money. The most done is that the Pentagon has been told that come 2017, the audits are coming.
Somehow, I don't see why, right now, the Pentagon cannot be told to start accounting for where the money goes. Each time money is spent, you write it down. Is that so impossible? Maybe we should make it a federal crime for a federal employee to spend money without writing it down in a ledger and then turning that ledger in each quarter.
I will say, I do wonder if this can be true. I know I must be doing something wrong in my math, or must be using wrong numbers, for if I'm not amiss, the annual budget for the Pentagon is $500 to $600 billion a year. Wouldn't that be $1 trillion in two years, $8 trillion in 16 years? Wouldn't that mean virtually all of the Pentagon money is unaccounted for, since 16 years from 1996 would be 2012?
The lack of accountability cannot be that bad, so obviously I have some wrong numbers or am figuring wrong. Alas, no time to figure it out as I should have been in bed a half hour ago.
As I do go to bed, it occurs to me that maybe the $8.5 trillion, indeed, is everything the Pentagon has spent. Since they can't account for the where the money is going, all the numbers are cooked, so none of them are accurate. If that be the case, the spin of the story has mislead us, and things are not as harrowing as they appear to be. Still, we should start demanding acountability, now, not just come 2017.
This story fizzles when the apparent explanation becomes apparent. I am left wondering why -- if it is true -- it wasn't disclosed that all the monies are said to be unaccounted for, even though we obviously know the true dollar amounts on much of the spending. Telling a part of a story can be misleading, and was.
(Note: the last paragraph was added the morning of 4/25/14.)
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/want-cut-government-waste-8-5-trillion-pentagon-142321339.html;_ylt=A0LEVizj5FlT5VUALNYPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMG04Z2o2BHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkAw--
http://personalliberty.com/pentagon-cant-account-for-8-5-trillion-taxpayer-dollars/
No comments:
Post a Comment