So, the Department of Defense doesn't keep track of its spending. It buys things without writing down what it buys. How is it that Congress or the President doesn't simply demand that they start doing so, now (as in, immediately)? Every time something is purchased, you write it in a ledger and turn the ledger in each quarter.
Is it because Defense lobbyists lobby against such prudent management of spending? Is it because they want to be able to spend too much for hammers or buy more than hammers than they actually need in order to keep their allotment of government funds flowing?
We are very foolish to be so beholden to lobbyists.
I read an Internet post in which a person says their uncle worked for Raytheon and each budget year, towards the end, the uncle would start getting calls from Pentagon procurement officers desperate to spend the last of their money so they would be able to go back and ask Congress for more. Such people aren't going to want you to know how they are spending the money, but they are liable to sometimes be willing to pay more than the market price.
If they are robbing the taxpayers blind, we would be wise to pass a law against it, so we could prosecute them. Why not a law saying that blatant over-purchasing with federal money is a felony? Then, in order to catch them, also make it a law that when you buy something, you have to write it down in a ledger and that to knowingly falsify the ledger is also a crime.
Common scense, to me, says we should do this. Why don't we? It seems very possible lobbyists have something to do with the lack of prudent governing in this matter. First, the government contractors send their lobbyists to Congress to ask for more money than they need (they rob us, the taxpayers), then, they send their lobbyists back to say, don't punish us for what we have done, do not make it against the law. (Or, maybe we just aren't enforcing the law, for there is such a thing as misappropriation of gvernment funds.)
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