Results 1 to 16 of 16

Thread: MSU economist found $21 trillion in unauthorized spending by DoD and HUD.

  1. #1

    MSU economist found $21 trillion in unauthorized spending by DoD and HUD.

    Guess the old adage "Can't spend what you ain't got, can't lose what you never had" doesn't apply here....

    Has Our Government Spent $21 Trillion Of Our Money Without Telling Us?

    I am co-authoring this column with Mark Skidmore, a Professor of Economics at Michigan State University.

    “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.” ~ Article I, Section 9, Clause 7, The US Constitution

    On July 26, 2016, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a report “Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported”. The report indicates that for fiscal year 2015 the Army failed to provide adequate support for $6.5 trillion in journal voucher adjustments. According to the GAO's Comptroller General, "Journal vouchers are summary-level accounting adjustments made when balances between systems cannot be reconciled. Often these journal vouchers are unsupported, meaning they lack supporting documentation to justify the adjustment or are not tied to specific accounting transactions…. For an auditor, journal vouchers are a red flag for transactions not being captured, reported, or summarized correctly."

    (Note, after Mark Skidmore began inquiring about OIG-reported unsubstantiated adjustments, the OIG's webpage, which documented, albeit in a highly incomplete manner, these unsupported "accounting adjustments," was mysteriously taken down. Fortunately, Mark copied the July 2016 report and all other relevant OIG-reports in advance and reposted them here. Mark has repeatedly tried to contact Lorin Venable, Assistant Inspector General at the Office of the Inspector General. He has emailed, phoned, and used LinkedIn to ask Ms. Venable about OIG's disclosure of unsubstantiated adjustments, but she has not responded.)


    Given that the entire Army budget in fiscal year 2015 was $120 billion, unsupported adjustments were 54 times the level of spending authorized by Congress. The July 2016 report indicates that unsupported adjustments are the result of the Defense Department's "failure to correct system deficiencies." The result, according to the report, is that data used to prepare the year-*end financial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit trail. The report indicates that just 170 transactions accounted for $2.1 trillion in year—end unsupported adjustments. No information is given about these 170 transactions. In addition many thousands of transactions with unsubstantiated adjustments were, according to the report, removed by the Army. There is no explanation concerning why they were removed nor their magnitude. The July 2016 report states, "In addition, DFAS (Defense Finance and Accounting Service) Indianapolis personnel did not document or support why DDRS (The Defense Department Reporting System) removed at least 16,513 of 1.3 million feeder file records during the Third Quarter."

    An appendix to the July 2016 report shows $2 trillion in changes to the Army General Fund balance sheet due to unsupported adjustments. On the asset side, there is $794 billion increase in the Army's Fund Balance with the U.S. Treasury. There is also an increase of $929 billion in the Army's Accounts Payable. This information raises additional major questions. First, what is the source of the additional $794 billion in the Army's Fund Balance? This adjustment represents more than six times appropriated spending. Second, do these transfers represent a flow of funds to the Army beyond those authorized by Congress? Third, were these funds authorized and if so when and by whom? Fourth, what is the source of these funds? Finally, the $929 billion in Accounts Payable appears to represent an amount owed for items or services purchased on credit. What entities have received or will receive payment?

    The July 2016 report is not the only such report of unsubstantiated adjustments. Mark Skidmore and Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, conducted a search of government websites and found similar reports dating back to 1998. While the documents are incomplete, original government sources indicate $21 trillion in unsupported adjustments have been reported for the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015.

    While government budgets can be complex, our government, like any business, can track receipts and payments and share this information in ways that can be understood by the public. The ongoing occurrence and gargantuan nature of unsupported, i.e., undocumented, U.S. federal government expenditures as well as sources of funding for these expenditures should be a great concern to all tax payers.

    Taken together these reports point to a failure to comply with basic Constitutional and legislative requirements for spending and disclosure. We urge the House and Senate Budget Committee to initiate immediate investigations of unaccounted federal expenditures as well as the source of their payment.

    PS, On December 11, 2017 we learned that the key documents had been reposted on the OIG website, but with different URLs. On October 5, 2017 we discovered that the link to the report “Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported” had been disabled. Within a several days, the links to other OIG documents we identified in our search were also disabled. The sequential non-random nature of this disabling process suggests a purposeful decision on the part of OIG to make key documents unavailable to the public via the website, as opposed to website reorganization, etc. We also revisited the website intermittently to see whether the documents had been reposted under different URLs—until very recently they had not been reposted. The OIG link to the most report “Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported”, which indicates $6.5 trillion in unsupported adjustments, can now be found here: We are currently searching the OIG website for the other reports and will share the links here once we have completed the search.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotliko.../#19ce36257aef



  2. Remove this section of ads by registering.
  3. #2
    Missing $21 Trillion Means Federal Government Is Lawless – Dr. Mark Skidmore

    Michigan State University economics professor Mark Skidmore made an astounding discovery about the finances and budgets of the U.S. federal government earlier this year. He and a team of graduate students discovered $21 trillion missing in the federal budget going back to 1998. Dr. Skidmore, who specializes in public finance, explains, “We know from official government sources that indicate $21 trillion is, in some way, unaccounted for. Furthermore, if we come back to the Constitution, all spending needs to be authorized by Congress. It looks to me, and I think I can conclude with a high degree of certainty, there is money flowing in, as well as out, that is unaccounted for. . . . That’s the one thing we know from these documents, that there is $21 trillion in unaccounted funds.”

    In one example, Skidmore found a huge transfer from the Treasury Department to the Army that, again, was not authorized. Keep in mind, the Army has an approved budget of a little more than $120 billion a year. Skidmore says, “In this one report . . . there is an appendix table that indicates there was a transfer from Treasury to the Army of about $800 billion. That’s almost a trillion dollars flowing in. There is a note that says we had to do this in order to reconcile past years. That doesn’t make sense to me either because, these earlier years, you have a transfer from the Treasury of your $120 billion or $130 billion, and every year, the Army is granted the authority to spend this money in the ways they say they will. How can you get (an additional) $800 billion in and call that an ‘adjustment’? I tried to call and talk to the office of the Inspector General to talk to the people who helped generate these reports. I haven’t been successful, and I stopped trying when they disabled the links.”

    You heard correctly. The government cut off inspection of their own financial accounting to the public. Skidmore says, “I have been able to talk to a few people. I tried calling the Congressional Budget Office. I talked with somebody at the GAO, and one or two people at the Office of the Inspector General, who were generating these reports. . . .It’s a big question in why don’t people want to look at this? I am just a blue collar economist at Michigan State University, and I am saying this does not make sense to me. Why don’t we look at this? . . . Some high ranking government official authorized the disabling of all the links to the key documents. We know that.”

    Dr. Skidmore thinks the federal accounting of $21 trillion in missing money is crazy and far outside the realm of normal. So, is this a legitimate U.S. national security issue? Dr. Skidmore says, “Yeah, and that is one of the reasons I decided to look at this. How can this be, and what does this mean? If trillions of dollars are flowing in and flowing out, it appears to be outside of our Constitution and outside of the rule of law. If that is the case, that really is troubling because it suggests that there is a layer of things happening that are outside the rule of law. I know, for example, that some activities, just for the sake of protection of the people involved in national security, have to be black budget. There is always stuff like that. Usually, it’s authorized spending, and some percentage is this black budget where only a small percentage of people and some in Congress know about it, but this is way outside of that. So, I am worried about it.”

    Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Professor Mark Skidmore of Michigan State University, as he talks about $21 trillion in missing money from the U.S. federal budget.


    After the Interview:

    Dr. Skidmore says, “If the American people don’t stand up and say this is unacceptable, nothing is going to happen. This is just wrong.”

    To find out more about Dr. Mark Skidmore, click here. To look at the documents he used to uncover $21 trillion in missing federal money, go to Solari.com and search the term “Missing Money” or simply click here. Dr. Skidmore copied all the documents he used for research and put them on Solari.com with the permission of its founder Catherine Austin Fitts.
    https://usawatchdog.com/missing-21-t...mark-skidmore/

  4. #3

  5. #4
    Is anyone surprised by this.

    I've passed along to family and friends... My prediction is anywhere from minor outrage to apathy. We've become too complacent and dumb culturally to do anything about this.
    “…I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.”

  6. #5
    *yawn* ... How 'bout dem Bears? ... *burp*
    The Bastiat Collection · FREE PDF · FREE EPUB · PAPER
    Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

    • "When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law."
      -- The Law (p. 54)
    • "Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
      -- Government (p. 99)
    • "[W]ar is always begun in the interest of the few, and at the expense of the many."
      -- Economic Sophisms - Second Series (p. 312)
    • "There are two principles that can never be reconciled - Liberty and Constraint."
      -- Harmonies of Political Economy - Book One (p. 447)

    · tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito ·

  7. #6
    Either the constitution allows for 20 trillion in debt or has been powerless to prevent it.

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Origanalist View Post
    Either the constitution allows for 20 trillion in debt or has been powerless to prevent it.
    Yeah, this is where I am now... Took me a long time to make that "flip" in my head.
    “…I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.”

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Origanalist View Post
    Either the constitution allows for 20 trillion in debt or has been powerless to prevent it.
    What would you add in there? Don't be a bootlicker? The people who don't vote brought you this, the people who feel powerless to prevent these things brought you this.




  10. Remove this section of ads by registering.
  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by nikcers View Post
    What would you add in there? Don't be a bootlicker? The people who don't vote brought you this, the people who feel powerless to prevent these things brought you this.


    Logic fail. I voted every year from 1976 up until 2016 when I finally realized the futility of it. Did you ever stop to think that the only way to prevent it is if enough people refused to vainly try to pick who their next master will be?

    At any rate, blaming it on somebody besides those who are guilty is pure deflection.

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Origanalist View Post
    Logic fail. I voted every year from 1976 up until 2016 when I finally realized the futility of it. Did you ever stop to think that the only way to prevent it is if enough people refused to vainly try to pick who their next master will be?

    At any rate, blaming it on somebody besides those who are guilty is pure deflection.
    Until we have a dictatorship we are completely responsible for the mess, thats why blowback is coming and its going to be HUGE. We are responsible for the millions dying and that will die as a result of our actions or inactions.

  13. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by nikcers View Post
    Until we have a dictatorship we are completely responsible for the mess, thats why blowback is coming and its going to be HUGE. We are responsible for the millions dying and that will die as a result of our actions or inactions.
    My action is to refuse to contribute to them come hell or high water. Voting doesn't seem to h a ve had any affect, you know what they say about repeating the same actions and expecting different results....

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Origanalist View Post
    My action is to refuse to contribute to them come hell or high water. Voting doesn't seem to h a ve had any affect, you know what they say about repeating the same actions and expecting different results....
    Your right if voting doesn't work then we need to discover why it doesn't work and fix that.

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by nikcers View Post
    Your right if voting doesn't work then we need to discover why it doesn't work and fix that.
    I'll tell you why it doesn't work. A republic that is not ruled by it's limitations but by its democratic citizenry is not a republic. It is a democracy. Majority rule.

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post
    I'll tell you why it doesn't work. A republic that is not ruled by it's limitations but by its democratic citizenry is not a republic. It is a democracy. Majority rule.
    Majority rule it is not, a small minority rule us by controlling our monetary system. Our military industrial complex can't exploit the political process of military spending if they have to put a gun to our head to do it. It might be easier if we didn't have guns though.

  17. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by nikcers View Post
    Majority rule it is not, a small minority rule us by controlling our monetary system. Our military industrial complex can't exploit the political process of military spending if they have to put a gun to our head to do it. It might be easier if we didn't have guns though.
    The MAJORITY would just as soon as take away your guns. Everything that has happened to this republic has happened because the people allowed it. No, not allowed it, welcomed it.

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by nikcers View Post
    Majority rule it is not, a small minority rule us by controlling our monetary system. Our military industrial complex can't exploit the political process of military spending if they have to put a gun to our head to do it. It might be easier if we didn't have guns though.
    The MAJORITY would just as soon as take away your guns. Everything that has happened to this republic has happened because the people allowed it. No, not allowed it, welcomed it.



  19. Remove this section of ads by registering.


Similar Threads

  1. Mulvaney Discovers 300 Billion In Unauthorized Government Spending
    By Swordsmyth in forum U.S. Political News
    Replies: 6
    Last Post: 05-24-2017, 12:42 PM
  2. The Budget; 9 Trillion in new spending, thanks republicans
    By Origanalist in forum Economy & Markets
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 01-21-2017, 02:49 PM
  3. $1.1 Trillion in spending
    By Pauls' Revere in forum Economy & Markets
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 12-13-2009, 03:54 PM
  4. Krugman: $10 trillion available for recovery spending
    By djinwa in forum Economy & Markets
    Replies: 10
    Last Post: 12-12-2008, 01:50 PM
  5. Are we really spending a trillion on our military this year?
    By ronpaulitician in forum Grassroots Central
    Replies: 21
    Last Post: 09-25-2007, 04:16 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •