Duh. You can't just put "classified alien technology R&D" as a clear-text line item. Just trust them, it's all going towards national, even global, security.
Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row
21–30 of 279 posts
Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's 'awful' for a person to live in debt. The richest Americans have loads of debt. A significant part of the American Dream is to own a house which is essentially debt. Perhaps the argument is more about whether the US government is drowning in debt more akin to CC debt (bad debt) or mortgage debt (good debt) but in the abstract, leverage is a perfectly fine thing for a government to use in order to f…
Debt is also how economies and a lot of companies grow
They could also grow by saving and reinvesting surpluses/profits
Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row
#23Can anyone explain to me why it is awful for a person to live in debt but it is okay for the federal government to do so? I've never understood this in the least, other than the "kick the can down the road, America superpower backed by military blah, blah, blah" very weak argument. History is full of the carnage of failed empires that had this same idea. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN 32 trillion in debt…
That’s the Fallacy of Composition - the economics of a government are not the economics of a grocery store or a household: https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/21/post-crash-...
But imagine if they were. Wars and other destructive behaviors would be a lot more difficult
Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's 'awful' for a person to live in debt. The richest Americans have loads of debt. A significant part of the American Dream is to own a house which is essentially debt. Perhaps the argument is more about whether the US government is drowning in debt more akin to CC debt (bad debt) or mortgage debt (good debt) but in the abstract, leverage is a perfectly fine thing for a government to use in order to f…
The American dream is to "own" a house, not to own a mortgage.
You do not own a mortgage. You have sold a mortgage.
Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row
#25Can anyone explain to me why it is awful for a person to live in debt but it is okay for the federal government to do so? I've never understood this in the least, other than the "kick the can down the road, America superpower backed by military blah, blah, blah" very weak argument. History is full of the carnage of failed empires that had this same idea. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN 32 trillion in debt…
You can leverage debt as an individual as well. We often shame people for bankruptcies when we shouldn't. Businesses fail all the time and go bankrupt -- running a household is similar and can fail.
Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row
#26It's important to understand the history here. Failing the audit isn't necessarily due to some sort of fraud or abuse (although there likely are isolated instances). The problem is that for decades Congress never allocated funds to put proper financial controls in place so naturally the accounting systems are a disconnected jumbled mess. When they started annual audits everyone knew they would fail so that was no sur…
appreciate this viewpoint.
not trying to defend the large 'disconnected jumbled mess' that is military spending, but headlines (and large percentage of armchair commentators) make it sound like 'see, told ya so!' when in fact this audit is the weakest basis for an argument that military spending has no oversight, gets too much, etc.
note that i'm agreeing there needs to be more oversight, less spending, etc. but this audit is not going to serve persuading that.
Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row
#27Just to provide a ground-level insider perspective: We've been doing things in the name of "audit readiness" for a decade, and I just... don't get it. It has translated to a lot of asinine things like
1. Making sure that everyone's marriage certificates and kids' birth certificates are on-file, to root out maybe the one person in 10,000 who is erroneously getting paid an extra $200 per month for certain entitlements.
2. Making sure that when we sign leave forms (i.e. requests for vacation time) we do so with a digital signature (even though they got printed out for processing and archival) using a certain image instead of a manual signature with a pen.
3. Going through an absurdly painful process to put on the books every physical piece of property we see (e.g. hand tools, step ladders, obsolete radio and telephone equipment) and then account for them on a monthly basis even if they've been useless and in storage since the 1970s.
Meanwhile, I can see tens or hundreds of billions of dollars of seemingly wasted man-hours on various initiatives (including those listed above), unnecessary personnel moves / rotations, and questionable purchases of new uniforms, equipment, vehicles, software, etc.
Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row
#28It's important to understand the history here. Failing the audit isn't necessarily due to some sort of fraud or abuse (although there likely are isolated instances). The problem is that for decades Congress never allocated funds to put proper financial controls in place so naturally the accounting systems are a disconnected jumbled mess. When they started annual audits everyone knew they would fail so that was no sur…
Sure, let me use that excuse with the IRS and this how it works.
IRS exists to give those organizations money, so they’re more of a client and you’re more of a product.
Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row
#29Can anyone explain to me why it is awful for a person to live in debt but it is okay for the federal government to do so? I've never understood this in the least, other than the "kick the can down the road, America superpower backed by military blah, blah, blah" very weak argument. History is full of the carnage of failed empires that had this same idea. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN 32 trillion in debt…
> Can anyone explain to me why it is awful for a person to live in debt but it is okay for the federal government to do so?
Not sure its awful for a person, depending on the kind of debt, but people and the government are differently situated. For one, people (natural or corporate) who have a debt in something that isn't a token that they can issue at will have an externally enforced obligation to do whatever is necess5 to acquire those tokens and sacrifice whatever is necessary to deliver them to the creditor.
Currency-issuing governments with debt in their own currency have an obligation to... ultimately, if nothing else works or is desirable, just poof up some currency.
Also, for certain governments, there isn't a vastly more powerful external enforcer of whatever obligation they have, whereas with most people, there is, in the form of the local government.
Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row
#30da fence is a broad term