The Pentagon's Lost Money

This brief essay covers my favorite underreported story of the past year: the total lack of financial accountability in that great cess-pool of corporate welfare also known as the Pentagon budget. According to Buddy Grizzard,

While Americans worry about the disastrous effects on our economy of the accounting scandals at Enron, WorldCom and elsewhere, an even larger accounting scandal has somehow escaped the public consciousness. According to estimates, the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development cannot account for over $3 trillion allotted to them by Congress, amounting to thousands of dollars of missing money for every man, woman and child in the country.

This story hasn’t gone completely unreported. In a Jan. 29 article titled “The War on Waste,” CBS News quoted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as saying, “according to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.” The article went on to quote retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, former commander of the Navy’s 2nd Fleet, as saying that while President George W. Bush’s 2003 budget proposal calls for $48 billion in new Pentagon spending, “with good financial oversight we could find $48 billion in loose change in that building, without having to hit the taxpayers.”

...As Americans watch their 401-K programs evaporate in the current economy, and wonder if Social Security will be there for them when they retire, it seems that another cause for grave concern has arisen due to our government’s lack of financial transparency and responsibility.