Army 6.5 Trillion Dollar Accounting Gaffe? Holy Crap on a cracker!

[bmbutch]

Haven't seen this on INGO, and search turned up nothing, I'd not read about it until today. Linking story on CNN

Am I missing something here, isn't this pretty big (BAD) news? While it may not be actual "missing dollars", how does this many accounting goofs occur? How much money is being wasted, frick, I find it just disgusting.

Audit reveals Army's trillion-dollar accounting gaffes - CNNPolitics.com

 

[Blackhawk2001]

I wonder what an audit of any large government department would reveal? Consider that, at the Army level, a great deal of "accounting" is done by clerks and Property Book Officers - many of whom learn their job "on-the-fly" and are subject to making numerous errors - all of which need to be corrected in numerous places. Paperwork gets misplaced - at any of several levels - or money gets reallocated - again, at any of several levels - and pretty soon nobody is precisely sure exactly where the books balance.

I wonder what an audit of the FED would look like???

 

[Woobie]

There are a lot of people in the Army who are really bad at their jobs. I am not surprised in the least.

 

[phylodog]

A thorough investigation will likely reveal that the money somehow ended up in Iran.

 

[Alamo]

The Army is not unique in this, the US Government as a whole does not have anything close to an accounting system that's worth a flip. (Of course, neither does Congress, so it's kind of rich that they threaten the Army for not having one). There are hundreds, probably thousands of separate accounting systems in the USG that have grown up over time, and they were interfaced with each other haphazardly, if at all.

Also, most USG spending goes to "entitlement" programs, which means that (according to Congress) if one qualifies for the entitlement, whether it's Obama phones or my retirement pay, it must be paid, and it's out of anyone's hands to change that without killing the whole entitlement. Good luck with that. No one in Congress or the USG really cares about tracking that too closely, except for the odd conservative or libertarian think tank.


But "discretionary" funds, as opposed to "entitlements" -- ah, there's a place where Congress can ramp the funds up or down willy nilly, and last time I looked, most of the "discretionary" funds were in the DoD budget. So the DoD gets extra scrutiny, extra oversight, extra fiduciary rules, and all that "help" also has to be programmed in the myriad of accounting systems in the DoD, which is another source of errors aside from the day-to-day boo-boos and the interface problems. Big ticket items like the F-22 are prime targets for "oversight" because they are so big, and the voter base for them is actually pretty small. Sure the defense companies and the USAF will lobby pretty hard for them, but in terms of real power (votes), they're no match for everyone who receives welfare or EITC or phones or whatever. They have to substitute money (political donations) and hookers or whatever, and agree to be the public whipping boy whenever budget cuts have to be made. Plus the rules imposed on acquisitions are just mind boggling -- true budgets only extend one-year into the future, because that's all the money Congress will allocate for buying most hardware. The Five Year Defense Plan and other such documents are really little more than wishes after the first year.

Anyway you roll all these opportunities for things to get screwed up together with dozens of different accounting systems, and yep, no one really knows what the hell is going on at a macro level. Since the accounting is all messed up, the IG really has no genuine idea whether the Army has lost track of $6 or $6 trillion, they just find some errors and extrapolate them across all the systems, and WHOA. Big number!

I don't think the USG will ever really have a single auditable accounting system, because no one will really want to know the answer, least of all Congress. If/when the US goes completely Venezuelan and ends up in a civil war, then maybe we can start from scratch, depending on who wins, but short of Armageddon, I don't think it will ever come close to getting fixed.

 

[Woobie]

Where is Leadeye? Somebody tried to follow the money and got lost.

 

[Brad69]

Hmm this is the same ARMY that took back $16.00 last year for overpayment. I could tell you so many stories like the one about the $6500 rug 4ft by 5ft. Oh well as long as the retirement check doesn't bounce.

 

["Username"]

Is this the same military that consistently claims to be significantly underfunded and constantly demands more taxpayer funding?

 

[marmion]

With all this corruption, greed and incompetence plainly out in the open just imagine what is going on behind the scenes.

 

[Woobie]

Yep. And it's the same army that issued a bunch of guys a second set of OCIE several years ago prior to a deployment. They then collected one set and put it in a shipping container. They lost the container, but the gear was still on everyone's clothing record. A lot of soldiers wound up paying thousands for gear that they had touched once.

 

[Denny347]

Not nearly as much as this story but NO ONE cared about the 70 Billion in US cash that disappeared in Afghanistan. If I ran my finances like the Feds...or local for that matter, I'd been homeless long ago.

 

[BugI02]

.

 

[Woobie]

Not nearly as much as this story but NO ONE cared about the 70 Billion in US cash that disappeared in Afghanistan. If I ran my finances like the Feds...or local for that matter, I'd been homeless long ago.

Yep. Federal agents running around a third world hell hole with thousands or even millions, just handing it out. I'm sure It all went to appropriate sources, and no government employees became rich in the process. That missing money? Nothing to worry about. A simple clerical error.

 

[miguel]

They probably bought all the 22LR for target practice...

 

[phylodog]

As long as it's a democrat pick in charge, nothing will come of it. They could have video of the Commanding General sitting around a blackjack table, with six hookers, spouting off about how much fun it is to spend "free" money and nothing would come of it. The press wouldn't report it. The POTUS wouldn't acknowledge it. All forgiven, all forgotten.

 

[BugI02]

Haven't seen this on INGO, and search turned up nothing, I'd not read about it until today. Linking story on CNN

Am I missing something here, isn't this pretty big (BAD) news? While it may not be actual "missing dollars", how does this many accounting goofs occur? How much money is being wasted, frick, I find it just disgusting.

Audit reveals Army's trillion-dollar accounting gaffes - CNNPolitics.com

From Independence Day

President Thomas Whitmore: I don't understand, where does all this come from? How do you get funding for something like this?
Julius Levinson: You don't actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?

 

[Brad69]

My last overseas tour I was stationed in Kuwait. I was assigned to a team who's job was to track down lost equipment all over the middle east. One of my favorite crazy missions was to recover a container in Afghanistan my orders were simple " I need you to find a container in Afghanistan" Where is it? "We don't know all we know is its blue this number is on it and it is full of technical engineering equipment worth about 11.3 million." OK I leave in the morning guess I will start in Bargram?

 

["Username"]

Forcing acceptance of queers and jamming through social engineering must cost much money.

 

[Woobie]

My last overseas tour I was stationed in Kuwait. I was assigned to a team who's job was to track down lost equipment all over the middle east. One of my favorite crazy missions was to recover a container in Afghanistan my orders were simple " I need you to find a container in Afghanistan" Where is it? "We don't know all we know is its blue this number is on it and it is full of technical engineering equipment worth about 11.3 million." OK I leave in the morning guess I will start in Bargram?

Lol, that's rich

 

[Leadeye]

Where is Leadeye? Somebody tried to follow the money and got lost.

I like it.