Pentagon officials are reportedly struggling to devise a plan to spend the extra $500 billion that Donald Trump wants to give the bloated, fraud-ridden agency in the next fiscal year, vindicating criticism of the funding proposal as immensely wasteful.

The Washington Post reported over the weekend that “White House aides and defense officials have run into logistical challenges surrounding where to put the money, because the amount is so large.”

The extra $500 billion, endorsed by the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, would push annual US military spending to a staggering $1.5 trillion after the Trump administration and congressional Republicans enacted unprecedented cuts to federal nutrition assistance and Medicaid last summer.

  • Gork@sopuli.xyz
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    10 hours ago

    Hmm let’s give an extra $500 billion to an agency that has failed all of its financial audits…

    • TheFogan@programming.dev
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      7 hours ago

      Which, some how the Dodge waste fraud and abuse team, never seemed to get around to investigating… They claimed they would, but I guess were too busy gutting everything that was investigating musks companies before getting bored with it.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      What most people don’t understand is there can be $0 missing money at the same time…

      It’s not one big pile of money, every agency has their own pile and much smaller piles.

      So say Navy sent 10k to Norfolk and Norfolk used it. That balances to $0 logically.

      If that 10k is late being sent between accounts, that’s a $20k discrepancy because it hits both ways instead of cancelling out, which isn’t logical but that how finances work. Missing 10k debit and 10k credit is still missing 20k even tho it balances out.

      But, and I can’t stress this enough, saying the DoD is “an agency” just tells everyone who knows about this stuff, that you have no idea what you’re talking about. Some agencies fail their annuals, some have never failed a single one.

      If you have questions, ask them. But please don’t just repeat talking points you don’t understand.

      • freagle@lemmy.ml
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        8 hours ago

        Why would we ask you questions? Do you work the GAO or something? Like what is this BS? DoD has a major accountability problem. Some of it is financial. Most of it is in their indiscriminate killing of civilians.

          • Brainsploosh@lemmy.world
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            5 hours ago

            Since about the 1500s we use double booking in bookkeeping, meaning the accounts look like that so that the balance sheet can balance and show 0 missing money. In most audits you don’t “summarise” error accounts, you check the balance accounts, statements and you check for why there’s stuff lying in the transaction accounts.

            You should probably have stayed on a couple more days of your accounting class.

          • Bakkoda@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            What an incredibly detailed and accurate way to dismiss the fact that, despite you clearly defining what accounting errors are, the Pentagon still can’t audit itself successfully and therefore shouldn’t be given more money.

            • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              9 hours ago

              way to dismiss the fact that

              You…

              You think clarification is dismissal?

              I’m fine answering questions to help people understand this, but you don’t understand any of it and aren’t asking questions…

              You have an opinion on what the conclusion should be, so you want to debate facts to make your conclusion appear to be the only option.

              But all of that would be pointless because you’re choosing to remain willfully ignorant of how accounting ledgers actually work.

              I just don’t have the time for that.

              • Bakkoda@lemmy.world
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                9 hours ago

                You think that them falling audits is my opinion? I think you missed the point and wrote an accurate yet completely unnecessary post.

          • SippyCup@lemmy.world
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            4 hours ago

            No. It’s literally not.

            Did you sleep through class? Maybe have a dream where the professor told you to make up missing money?

            This type of discrepancy is, wait for it, accounted for. It’s the point of bookkeeping. You know that money has been sent or received, you know how much you owe and how much you’re owed. A check in the mail isn’t going to cause a failed audit. 10,000 checks in the mail won’t cause a failed audit. You can look back over thousands of transactions and know, “oh, we normally get that check on the last Friday, it’s the last Monday, nothing to worry about yet.” Any auditor would also look at the history of payments and not account for money that’s not expected yet.

            Stop going on the Internet and telling lies.