Pentagon Fails Fifth Audit — And Yet Congress Approves $847 Billion War Budget

The black box of the military-industrial complex can’t find 60% of its assets

I love the expression, ‘a national budget is a moral document.’ When applied to the United States, it reveals Uncle Sam’s psychotic nature and the aggressive empire hiding in plain sight. One doesn’t spend more on their military than the next nine countries combined and then pretend they’re playing defense.

The worst part for me is the lack of anger on the issue in America. The Pentagon hoovering up more than fifty percent of discretionary spending should be seen as completely unacceptable.

The military budget rapidly approaching one trillion dollars while the child tax credit or federal school lunch programs are ended due to ‘lack of funds’ should have people enraged and in the streets.

And in any semi-functioning nation, the freaking Pentagon failing its fifth consecutive audit and not being able to track trillions of dollars should have televised Congressional hearings, Defense Department officials being held responsible, and a fully transparent citizen-led accounting of what holes those hundreds of billions a year have and continue to disappear into.

While almost half of Americans don’t have $400 in the bank and twelve million children are food insecure, the insane military budget and misappropriation of funds should garner the rage it deserves.

The absence of an appropriate, justified, and entirely rational anger within the populace shows how well the American mind has been conditioned.

I saw this tweet the other day about how effectively US propaganda makes its citizens more upset about imaginary problems in Ch!na than real problems in America.

Of course, as with all things, it starts with the media.

And even this fifth failed audit attempt is largely being downplayed as Congress again approves a massive increase in war spending.

Around 1,600 auditors dug through $3.5 trillion in assets and $3.7 trillion in liabilities and found that the Department of Defense couldn’t account for 61 percent of their assets.

A Google search on the topic reveals many headlines like this one from The Hill: “Defense Department fails another audit, but makes progress.” And while that might be true, progress could have been made, this is the freaking Defense Department not being able to properly account for trillions of dollars.

And they’ve had plenty of time to get things in order.

Since the early nineties, mandatory audits for government agencies has been federal law. It took a while — apparently, it took the Department of Homeland Security ten years — but all other agencies have successfully completed an audit, except the DoD.

Around 1,600 auditors dug through $3.5 trillion in assets and $3.7 trillion in liabilities and found that the Department of Defense couldn’t account for 61 percent of their assets.

As NPR reported last year: ‘“Right now, the Pentagon can’t even tell you where all of its buildings are located in the United States,” the senior aide to Sanders said…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.’

Or there’s this nugget from CNBC: ‘One example of an item found in the recent audit was a Navy warehouse that was not on the Navy’s property records and that housed aircraft parts worth $126 million, according to the Government Accountability Office.’

And this insanity gets shrugged off.

Imagine if a different branch of government were in this position. Lawmakers would be flipping out and calling for immediate spending cuts. But when it comes to the Pentagon, they do the opposite.

These are hundreds of millions of dollars missing in rounding errors while US cities don’t have clean freaking drinking water.

Americans are resigned to saying, “Yep, the Defense Department is massive, has trillions in assets, gets hundreds of billions a year, and doesn’t know where its buildings are, but we must cut this school budget because we don’t have money.”

Almost thirty years and five failed audits, and much of the media is talking about ‘progress’ or how this is a ‘teachable moment.’

And then, rather than stop giving that agency hundreds of billions a year or at least reduce the budget, Congress votes to give them another annual $847,000,000,000.

Meanwhile, polls show that most Americans are against the record-setting military spending.

Again, it’s insanity.

The federal budget is a moral document.

And yet, with the litany of economic and social issues I’m always harping on about, the lack of healthcare, the crumbling domestic infrastructure, the constant fear-mongering and austerity politics, and even the thousands of veterans living on the street, the US government votes to dump $847,000,000,000 into a never-audited black hole of war that’ll line the pockets of military-industrial complex goons and war profiteers.

Come on, America.

Let’s at least have the proper horrified response to this barbarity.