{"id":16355,"date":"2015-06-18T11:44:20","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T11:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=16355"},"modified":"2015-06-18T11:45:02","modified_gmt":"2015-06-18T11:45:02","slug":"8-5-trillion-goes-missing-from-the-pentagon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=16355","title":{"rendered":"$8.5 Trillion Goes Missing From The Pentagon"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 id=\"yui_3_18_1_1_1434627742107_2252\" class=\"headline\">Want to Cut Government Waste? Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can\u2019t Account For<\/h1>\n<p>By Lauren Lyster<\/p>\n<div id=\"ymh-player-iframe\" class=\"yom-figure yom-fig-center\">\n<div id=\"yom-video-4e5cbe2a-3c82-3737-8426-0effc3d209a1\" class=\"yom-video-player\" style=\"width: 630px; height: 354px;\" data-yom-embed-config=\"{width:630, height:354}\" data-yom-embed-source=\"{media_id_1:4e5cbe2a-3c82-3737-8426-0effc3d209a1, media_path_1:\/video\/want-cut-government-waste-8-225037129.html?format=embed, media_alias_1:want-cut-government-waste-8-225037129, media_autoplay_1:off}\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"yui_3_18_1_1_1434627742107_2328\" src=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/video\/want-cut-government-waste-8-225037129.html?format=embed&amp;player_autoplay=false\" width=\"630\" height=\"354\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>If you thought the botched rollout of Obamacare, the government shutdown, or the sequester represented Washington dysfunction at its worst, wait until you hear about the taxpayer waste at the Defense Department.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Special Enterprise Reporter Scot Paltrow unearthed the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/investigates\/pentagon\/#article\/part2\" data-rapid_p=\"11\">high cost of the Pentagon\u2019s bad bookkeeping<\/a>\u201d in a Reuters investigation. It amounts to $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 that has <em>never <\/em>been accounted for. (The year 1996 was the first that the Pentagon should have been audited under a law requiring audits of all government departments. Oh, and by the way, the Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with this law.)<\/p>\n<p>We talk to Paltrow in the accompanying video about his findings.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some some highlights he found among the billions of dollars of waste and dysfunctional accounting at the Pentagon:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The DOD has amassed a backlog of more than $500 billion in unaudited contracts with outside vendors. How much of that money paid for actual goods and services delivered isn\u2019t known.<\/li>\n<li>Over the past 10 years the DOD has signed contracts for provisions of more than $3 trillion in goods and services. How much of that money is wasted in overpayments to contractors, or was never spent and never remitted to the Treasury is a mystery.<\/li>\n<li>The Pentagon uses a standard operating procedure to enter false numbers, or \u201cplugs,\u201d to cover lost or missing information in their accounting in order to submit a balanced budget to the Treasury. In 2012, the Pentagon reported $9.22 billion in these reconciling amounts. That was up from $7.41 billion the year before.<\/li>\n<li>The accounting dysfunction leads the DOD to buy too much stuff. One example: the \u201cvehicular control arm\u201d to supply Humvees. In 2008, the DOD had 15,000 parts &#8212; a 14-year supply (anything more than three years is considered excess supply). Yet from 2010 to 2012, it bought 7,437 more of these parts and at higher prices than they paid for the ones they already had.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Defense Department\u2019s 2012 budget was $565.8 billion. Paltrow points out that\u2019s more than the annual defense budgets of the next 10 biggest military spenders combined. He tells us the Pentagon \u201calmost certainly is\u201d the biggest source of waste in the government based on his reporting.<\/p>\n<p id=\"yui_3_18_1_1_1434627742107_2319\">Looking forward, defense spending in the fiscal 2014 budget is set to be cut $20 billion from 2013 levels due to the sequester. In response, military officials, including Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, have raised an alarm over the impact of these cuts. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2013-11-17\/pentagon-chief-sounds-alarm-over-us-budget-cuts\/5097582\" data-rapid_p=\"14\">Hagel told a conference<\/a>the cuts are \u201ctoo steep, too deep, and too abrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p id=\"yui_3_18_1_1_1434627742107_2317\">The <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/news\/articles\/SB10001424052702304384104579143873007691030\" data-rapid_p=\"15\">Wall Street Journal reports<\/a> Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James F. Amos told a House panel in September the \u201cabruptness and inflexibility of sequestration\u2026could erode our readiness to dangerous levels.\u201d<\/p>\n<p id=\"yui_3_18_1_1_1434627742107_2315\">Does Paltrow think that\u2019s true?<\/p>\n<p id=\"yui_3_18_1_1_1434627742107_2309\">\u201cSo much of that could be cut, that the impact of the sequester would be much less than [what] Pentagon officials are claiming.\u201d He adds that officials are basing their budget requests on their own priorities, rather than firm knowledge of what\u2019s needed because leaders don\u2019t know what money is slushing around.<\/p>\n<p id=\"yui_3_18_1_1_1434627742107_2313\">The good news is that because of arguments over the deficit and the budget, Paltrow sees signs that members of Congress are getting serious about waste at the Pentagon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Want to Cut Government Waste? Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can\u2019t Account For By Lauren Lyster If you thought the botched rollout of Obamacare, the government shutdown, or the sequester represented Washington dysfunction at its worst, wait until you &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=16355\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}