The Pentagon has never completed a successful independent audit. US Senators from both parties have introduced another attempt to pass a bill requiring a completed successful audit.
The Audit the Pentagon Act 2023.
The Pentagon can’t even tell us where all their buildings are.
"Right now, the Pentagon can't even tell you where all of its buildings are located in the United States,"www.sanders.senate.gov/…
Having failed to complete it’s last five audits (only recently required) five republicans, an Independent and four Democrats have introduced a bill, again, that would reduce the budget of any Department of Defense component by 1% if unable to successfully complete an audit. (And no guaranteed annual increase.)
While every other Government department is required and does pass an annual audit the Pentagon is $wallowing half of all discretionary spending and can’t or won’t tell Congress or the American people where almost half a trillion dollars goes every year.
The legislation comes after the Pentagon failed its fifth budget audit last year and after a CBS News report found defense contractors overcharged the Defense Department by nearly 40 percent to 50 percent. According to the Office of the Inspector General for the Defense Department, sometimes overcharging reached more than 4,000 percent. thehill.com/...
“DOD obligates more money every year than all civilian federal agencies combined.”
www.sanders.senate.gov/...
Another big issue is that the Pentagon hasn't been able to say how many contractors and subcontractors it employs. In 2018, it emerged that the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency did not have a paper trail for more than $800 million in construction projects.
A failed audit from one recent year "uncovered a warehouse full of aircraft parts for planes that haven't been used in over a decade," the Sanders aide said.
And then there's the F-35, the notoriously expensive and controversial joint strike fighter jet. Despite costing more than $1.7 trillion in its estimated life cycle, attempts to audit the program have run into major hurdles. www.npr.org/...
Since the early 1990’s, Federal law has required audits for all government agencies. Since 2013, all but DOD have been able to meet that requirement. Last year, the DOD failed its fifth audit and was unable to account for over half of its assets, which are in excess of $3.1 trillion, or roughly 78 percent of the entire federal government. www.sanders.senate.gov/...
The DOD is the milliionaire/billionaire maker while significant billions are unaccounted for and just disappear.
Billions Over Baghdad: How Did $9B in Cash Airlifted from the Fed to Iraq Go Missing?
One month after the invasion of Iraq, the United States began airlifting planeloads of cash to Baghdad. Between April 2003 and June 2004, a total of $12 billion of U.S. currency was shipped to Iraq where it was to be dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority for reconstruction. To date, at least $9 billion cannot be accounted for. In a startling new expose in Vanity Fair, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele follow the money trail from the Federal Reserve to Iraq.
www.democracynow.org/...
Theft, corruption and possibly incompetence has cost Americans trillions of dollars just in the past decade. Guessing the billionaire owned House republicans will not like the idea of their owners not being able to manipulate our tax dollars (to their advantage) and will not allow America to see where the missing billions are going.
Want to balance the budget?
It ain’t rocket surgery.
Force the generals and admirals to watch our pennies and be accountable.
Then collect the taxes the wealthy don’t pay and finally raise taxes on billionaires.
That’s how America can pay for Social Security, Medicare and every social service, forever.