This looks like fraud to me. I'm not certain what you're talking about but when a huge amount of money given to the Pentagon cannot be accounted for it requires a thorough investigation. This is on the order of our TOTAL NATIONAL DEBT. Understand?
-
Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!
A Pentagon Audit in July 2016 Revealed $6.5T Unaccounted for
- Thread starter FollowTheWay
- Start date
We don't know what TRILLIONS of Pentagon dollars were spent on. An inside conspiracy, foreign enemies? Who knows. I don't take a caviler attitude towards this as you do.
Well, no. It's on the order of one-third of our total national debt (Thanks to Obama for running the debt up.) The amount is huge, which makes it unlikely that it is "unaccounted for."
Since the amount we are talking about is essentially the full budget of the military for a number of years, we can use logic to tell us what has happened to the money. The military is functioning - that takes money. They have lots of new ships and planes - that take a LOT of money. We are deployed all over the world - that takes a LOT of money.
How are we doing all of those things if the money has disappeared? Simply put, it hasn't.
The issue is one of accounting practices.
I make tens of thousands of dollars a year, yet my bank account has only a fraction of that in it. WHAT'S HAPPENED!! Can I account for every penny? Can I provide receipts for the majority of my purchases? Not really. I can do it for some things like healthcare, since there is a huge incentive for me to keep up with it, but for food and many purchases, I don't have detailed records.
That's essentially what is going on here. The military is not keeping detailed accounts like a business, and it is difficult for oversight branches of the government to properly audit them. It's not a grand conspiracy, it is human foibles.
Has some money been used improperly? I'm certain of it - it's the government after all. Are there TRILLIONS MISSING?!?! Nope.
Hardly a caviler attitude. I just don't get wound up about stories that are obviously distortions of what has happened. The story doesn't make sense on its face.
Yes, I understand probably more than you can know.
How many government purchase cards have you ever been signed for? How many contracts have you been a representative for? What regulatuons regarding the requirements to keep reocrds of financial transactions have you read cover to cover?
As others have pointed out, the money didn't vanish. It's just that the information systems and regulations regarding can't keep up, because bureaucracies are inefficient. You should see the stacks of paper records I keep around, because archaic reporting requirements have never been updated.
Last week a took some M2 and M109 starters to be repaired offpost, because it's cheaper and quicker than sending them back through the supply system to depot. I paid with a government credit card. Just because a bean counter can't drill down to my transaction on his computer doesn't mean 6.5 trillion dollars disappeared, or that there is wide spread malfeasance.
Sure, in an organization of millions of people, there are a few bad apples. They are normally caught and prosecuted.
If you know what it's for it's not included. I share a concern about the F-35 expenditures.
As a taxpayer, I expect to know where my tax $ are going. If the Pentagon accounting system is that far off it needs to be replaced immediately. I think there's some kind of fraud going on big-time.
Did you take a look at the copy of the Pentagon audit I attached. I suppose you're just another person who thinks there are no facts anymore. Nothing matters, right?
Sure.
Replacing systems and practices takes time. It also doesn't change the past. That's actually what they are trying to do now.
That's your choice.
Yes. I didn't go through it in detail, but I did read the finding:
Finding
The Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Financial Management & Comptroller) (OASA[FM&C]) and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Indianapolis (DFAS Indianapolis) did not adequately support $2.8 trillion in third quarter journal voucher (JV) adjustments and $6.5 trillion in yearend JV adjustments made to AGF data during FY 2015 financial statement compilation. The unsupported JV adjustments occurred because OASA(FM&C) and DFAS Indianapolis did not prioritize correcting the system deficiencies that caused errors resulting in JV adjustments, and did not provide sufficient guidance for supporting system‑generated adjustments.
In addition, DFAS Indianapolis did not document or support why the Defense Departmental Reporting System‑Budgetary (DDRS-B), a budgetary reporting system, removed at least 16,513 of 1.3 million records during third quarter FY 2015. This occurred because DFAS Indianapolis did not have detailed documentation describing the DDRS-B import process or have accurate or complete system reports.
As a result, the data used to prepare the FY 2015 AGF third quarter and yearend financial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit trail. Furthermore, DoD and Army managers could not rely on the data in their accounting systems when making management and resource decisions. Until the Army and DFAS Indianapolis correct these control deficiencies, there is considerable risk that AGF financial statements will be materially misstated and the Army will not achieve audit readiness by the congressionally mandated deadline of September 30, 2017.
Did you notice that it didn't say that funds were missing? Did you notice that it explicitly mentioned that there is "considerable risk that... the Army will not achieve audit readiness by the congressionally mandated deadline of September 30, 2017?"
This has never been about widespread missing funds, much less TRILLIONS of dollars being spent in a nefarious way.
Seriously? Several of us here are trying to deal in facts and you are throwing out conspiracies and asserting "big time" fraud without evidence. Do those facts matter to you or do you want to continue to spread falsehoods?
So you're saying that repeating a Pentagon audit report corresponds to generating a conspiracy theory? The pertinent point is the other video I posted, which showed Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld saying that on Sept 10, 2001 these were $2.7T missing on the Pentagon audit. This has been going on for a long time. Why should I believe any statement that everything will be straightened out by Sept. 2017? Rumsfeld said in 2001 that in his judgement an outside firm needs to straighten this out and it will take YEARS to come to the bottom of it. I think it's safe to assume that the problem is far worse now.
Of course not. Misunderstanding/misrepresenting it and claiming a massive fraud based on little to no evidence amounts to a conspiracy theory.
You mean the 9/11 conspiracy video that takes Rumfeld's statements (and everyone else's too) out of context and has an amateur narrator breathlessly explaining his theory? Even in that jumbled up mish-mash, Rumsfeld DID NOT say that the funds were "missing."
That was the point of the report we have both quoted. And I pointed out that it takes a long time to change out accounting systems and procedures in large organizations. I don't know who you think has been telling you that it is a quick fix...
Yes.
Maybe, maybe not. Do you happen to know what they did?
What do you call a situation like this? A minor mistake? I have no evidence yet there's been a massive fraud perpetrated on the American people. It simply seems to me that for the Pentagon to not be able to identify $6.5T in funding seems to require a large criminal offense. Just my evaluation. Do you have an evaluation to share?
Rumsfeld was not quoted out of context. he made this statement in a speech at the Pentagon. This has nothing to do with a 9/11 conspiracy. It's reality. It seems as if you can no longer distinguish between the two.
if you want to deal in facts recognize the ones I've posted. This audit is about $6.5T that was given to the Pentagon by the Congress that cannot be accounted for. I have no idea where you're coming from except extreme far-right lies.
Well it IS FAR WORSE TODAY. That's what the audit showed.
B-A-L-O-N-E-Y.
Check the Clinton Foundation bank accounts
Just kiddin' (well maybe).
HankD
In the beginning of my engineering career, I worked for a NASA contractor and saw how aerospace money was wasted. The rest of my career (38 years) I worked for AT&T and related companies. I did mostly strategic planning and economic/technical feasibility studies so I have a lot of experience dealing with relatively large sums of money spent to enhance the network. What do you think the reaction of AT&T and its stockholders would have been if they had "only misplaced" say $6.5B (a thousand times less). If you can't find the money in your auditing systems you have no idea where it went.