Pentagon Racks Up $35 Trillion in Accounting Changes in One Year

What? How is this even possible? Doesn't this mean that the Pentagon has its own "economy" that is larger than the US'?

Where else is the Pentagon getting money from?

Our worship of the military allows for this to happen. In a just world, 2/3 of the people at the Pentagon and our military higher ups would have been executed decades ago.

I didn't read the article, but it is implausible that the "net" is $35 trillion all in either direction.

I get that the Feds, generally, and DoD specifically, have a reputation for being mushy accountants - I completely get that and I'm not defending it.

If someone says they can't account for $35 Trillion of tax dollars that were collected, allocated and spent - even if one went back 1000 years - NOT credible. Not possible, even in theory. I mean, we haven't had $1T+ budgets for 35 years. The DoD hasn't ever had a trillion dollar budget, so one would need a 100% loss for 50, 60 years.

NOT POSSIBLE. This is couple billion here, and there, one way or another and accounting problems - loss of accountability for money isn't the same thing as loss of the money or corruption (although it certainly is malfeasance and can mask those things.)

I'd like to see the GAO's report. The article makes this seem less alarming to me than the headline would indicate.

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How would it have $35 trillion worth of that way more then the entire US economy?? Seems like $35 billion might be the correct number.

This is probaly the same nonsense as the claims that the govt lost account of trillions right before 9/11

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It's double, triple, quadruple, etc. accounting for poorly documented or un-documented internal DoD transactions.

The cumulative budget of American defense and national security for the entire history of the country doesn't even approach that number.

It's some AOC-like stupidity to suggest that it's a black hole of spending that's bigger than the entire American economy. And, oh, wouldn't you look at that - Ocasio-Cortez has also previously and stupidly referenced a similar number in trying to explain funding for Medicare for All!

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I didn't read the article, but it is implausible that the "net" is $35 trillion all in either direction.

I get that the Feds, generally, and DoD specifically, have a reputation for being mushy accountants - I completely get that and I'm not defending it.

If someone says they can't account for $35 Trillion of tax dollars that were collected, allocated and spent - even if one went back 1000 years - NOT credible. Not possible, even in theory. I mean, we haven't had $1T+ budgets for 35 years. The DoD hasn't ever had a trillion dollar budget, so one would need a 100% loss for 50, 60 years.

NOT POSSIBLE. This is couple billion here, and there, one way or another and accounting problems - loss of accountability for money isn't the same thing as loss of the money or corruption (although it certainly is malfeasance and can mask those things.)

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I agree. As a government auditor, I can actually think of a few reasons why this could be legitimate. The most obvious being transfers between funds because government fund accounting is STUPID and doesn't make sense to most accountants, much less most people with no accounting background at all.

Totaling up the dollar value of journal entries is useless information to me.

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What do you mean?

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What if they're mining gold somewhere off planet?

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but it is implausible that the "net" is $35 trillion all in either direction.

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Correct. Not just implausible. Impossible.