Report Reveals $8.5 Trillion Missing From Pentagon Budget

[OnePercenter]

Let's win a national election, Freewill, and take the presidency from the Dems. If we can do that, I will read you more closely.

The GOP doesn't want the White House. Palin, Romney, and any of the clown car candidates today cemented or will cement that.

 

[Pop23]

Is anyone surprised?

For years I've said politicians are pigs and DC is the pigs through

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

But the government should completely run our health care system

The insurance companies have done such a bang-up job?

They're doing better than the V.A. that's for damn sure.

 

[depotoo]

Such a misleading headline and the story is 2 years old.
Special Report The Pentagon s doctored ledgers conceal epic waste

Because of its persistent inability to tally its accounts, the Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with a law that requires annual audits of all government departments. That means that the $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996, the first year it was supposed to be audited, has never been accounted for. That sum exceeds the value of China's economic output last year.

Congress in 2009 passed a law requiring that the Defense Department be audit-ready by 2017. Then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in 2011 tightened the screws when ordered that the department make a key part of its books audit-ready in 2014.

Reuters has found that the Pentagon probably won't meet its deadlines. (See related article [ID:nL2N0J00PX].) The main reason is rooted in the Pentagon's continuing reliance on a tangle of thousands of disparate, obsolete, largely incompatible accounting and business-management systems. Many of these systems were built in the 1970s and use outmoded computer languages such as COBOL on old mainframes. They use antiquated file systems that make it difficult or impossible to search for data. Much of their data is corrupted and erroneous.

"It's like if every electrical socket in the Pentagon had a different shape and voltage," says a former defense official who until recently led efforts to modernize defense accounting.

 

[JakeStarkey]

The insurance companies have done worse than VA generally in providing coverage with adequate care. Taz, your comment is unverifiable.

The VA has problems, yes, but the insurance health coverage industry brought their catastrophe down on itself all by itself. We can point at the Congresses and the Presidents for not doing what should have been done.

And when all is adi and done, my military and VA experience for medical reasons has been very good for almost forty years.

 

[OnePercenter]

But the government should completely run our health care system

The insurance companies have done such a bang-up job?

They're doing better than the V.A. that's for damn sure.

With help from Republicans eliminating competition, Insurance companies are built to collect premiums and payout very little in claims. The VA provided medical care on a limited budget.

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

Why wouldnt republicans be pissed about it?
You'll try and make any issue a partisan one.

You know why.

Why dont you tell me dumbass?

 

[JakeStarkey]

I am glad to see the GOP finally roll out a plan.

The major sticking point within the party planners is subsidies: yes or no. The division is apparently fairly equal.

If SCOTUS rules against the subsidies (unlikely but not improbable), the GOP has a very short time to address the situation in Congress. If not, the Presidency and the Senate will be blue after next year's elections.