Earlier this year, a Michigan State University economist, working with graduate students and a former government official, found $21 trillion in unauthorized spending in the departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015.
The work of Mark Skidmore and his team, which included digging into government websites and repeated queries to U.S. agencies that went unanswered, coincided with the Office of Inspector General, at one point, disabling the links to all key documents showing the unsupported spending. (Luckily, the researchers downloaded and stored the documents.)
Now, the Department of Defense has announced it will conduct the first department-wide, independent financial audit in its history (read the Dec. 7 announcement here).
The Defense Department did not say specifically what led to the audit. But the announcement came four days after Skidmore discussed his team’s findings on USAWatchdog, a news outlet run by former CNN and ABC News correspondent Greg Hunter.
“While we can’t know for sure what role our efforts to compile original government documents and share them with the public has played, we believe it may have made a difference,” said Skidmore, the Morris Chair in State and Local Government Finance and Policy at MSU.
Skidmore got involved last spring when he heard Catherine Austin Fitts, former assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development, refer to a report which indicated the Army had $6.5 trillion in unsupported adjustments, or spending, in fiscal 2015. Given the Army’s $122 billion budget, that meant unsupported adjustments were 54 times spending authorized by Congress. Typically, such adjustments in public budgets are only a small fraction of authorized spending.
Skidmore thought Fitts had made a mistake. “Maybe she meant $6.5 billion and not $6.5 trillion,” he said. “So I found the report myself and sure enough it was $6.5 trillion.”
Skidmore and Fitts agreed to work together to investigate the issue further. Over the summer, two MSU graduate students searched government websites, especially the website of the Office of Inspector General, looking for similar documents dating to 1998. They found documents indicating a total $21 trillion in undocumented adjustments over the 1998-2015 period. (The original government documents and a report describing the issue can be found here.)
msutoday.msu.edu/news/2017/msu-scholars-find-21-trillion-in-unauthorized-government-spending-defense-department-to-conduct/
Yes, “unauthorized spending” means “missing” in this case. Learn what “unsupported adjustments” are you accounting-ignorant plebs.
US Debt To Hit $30 Trillion In 2028 Under Trump Budget – total US debt is projected to rise from $20.5 trillion today to an unprecedented $29.9 trillion in 2028
On Friday, with the US on the verge of another government shutdown and debt ceiling breach (with the agreement reached only after the midnight hour, literally) Moody’s warned Trump that he should prepare for a downgrade from the rating agency that refused to join S&P in downgrading the US back in August 2011. The reason: Trump’s – and the Republicans and Democrats – aggressive fiscal policies which will sink the US even deeper into crippling debt while widening the budget deficit, resulting in “meaningful fiscal deterioration.”
In short: a US downgrade due to Trumponomics appears inevitable. And incidentally, with Friday’s 2-year debt ceiling extension, it means that once total US debt resets – unburdened by the debt ceiling – it will be at or just shy of $21 trillion.
Now, following today’s release of the White House budget proposal from the Office of the Management and Budget, Moody’s will have even greater motivation to downgrade the US as according to the forecast, total US debt is projected to rise from $20.5 trillion today to an unprecedented $29.9 trillion in 2028.
Now, following today’s release of the White House budget proposal from the Office of the Management and Budget, Moody’s will have even greater motivation to downgrade the US as according to the forecast, total US debt is projected to rise from $20.5 trillion today to an unprecedented $29.9 trillion in 2028.
SK