The Federal Government Can’t Account for $21 Trillion. Does Anybody Care?

Originally shared by Before It's News

The Federal Government Can’t Account for $21 Trillion. Does Anybody Care?

by Dr. Terrence Leveck, Solari:

On September 10, 2001, then Secretary of the Department of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that for the 1999 DOD budget, “According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.” https://goo.gl/TbcEKr The following day the US sustained the terrorist attacks that forever changed our world, and this startling revelation was largely forgotten, until recently.

When a discrepancy occurs in an account that cannot be traced, it is usual to make what is called an undocumentable adjustment, or journal voucher. This is similar to when your balance is off by ten dollars when you reconcile your checkbook, so you add or subtract that amount to make everything balance with the bank. In 1999 the amount the Pentagon adjusted was eight times the DOD budget for that year, and one third greater than the total federal budget. https://goo.gl/jcmidZ

By 2015 the amount reported by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) had increased to $6.5 trillion for the Army only. https://goo.gl/947u2K Dr. Mark Skidmore, Professor of Economics at Michigan State University, thought this made no sense and suspected an error in media reporting. Looking into this issue by using data published on the government’s own websites, he found that $21 trillion in unsupported adjustments have been reported by DOD and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the years 1998-2015. That’s $65,000 for every person in America.

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