Originally posted by Phage
One of the problems is that we don't know the timespan he's talking about. Ten years? Twenty years?
Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen today released details of President Clinton's Fiscal Year (FY) 2001 defense budget. The budget requests
$291.1 billion in budget authority and $277.5 billion in outlays for the Department of Defense (DoD).
www.fas.org...
Yes, to be sure we don't know the timespan but consider this:
Budget Authority (BA) is authority granted by Congress (by law) to enter into obligations or outlays (budget outlays - BO). So, in the year you quoted
the only authority they had was for the $291.1 billion
by law. It would take 10 years at that rate to account for
only what is
unaccounted for. We know they paid staff at the pentagon and all of the military bases around the world, office supplies, maintenance
items, gasoline, bought planes and such, right? We
can account for that.
Now, in the CBS article, it also states that the pentagon could not account for 25% (or $2.3 trillion) of it's budget (from the Inspector General's
report). If the $2.3 trillion reported here is from the
authorized by law budget then the total budget would have to be $9.2 TRILLION.
At the rate of your quoted annual BA ($291.1 billion) that would work out to be
31.6 YEARS. So, 25% of an annually appropriated budget of $291
billion OVER 31 1/2 years is unaccounted for. Yeah right... and nobody noticed before - even former inspectors' general? Let's assume that this is
the case for the moment - that the government really doesn't know where these $$ have gone over almost 32 years - that's not simple waste - that's
ABUSE. And yes, there are criminal laws that require that those responsible for waste, fraud and abuse be JAILED.
BUT, I don't think that is the case here. This is absolute evidence in my mind of the Defense Department's black budget.
Let's talk about the legalities of "black budgets". We know that, by law, Congress has to appropriate any funds used from the treasury. We also
know that the only way they are legally supposed do this is by enacting laws. We have appropriations laws that specifically state that no funds will
be used
except as appropriated by Congress (and specifically so). We also know that all laws are public, right?
IF, and
that's a huge if, the Defense Department has been appropriated this budget by Congress, then Congress itself is breaking the law. On the other hand,
if DoD has
not been appropriated this budget through the enactment of a law, then DoD is breaking the law. So who's breaking the law? Somebody
is.
Any way you choose to look at it, a law is being broken... and NO INVESTIGATION of it, at all.
All that said, we can rest assured that they do indeed know where this money went, and I also feel safe in saying that it continues to this day. Our
government, although very bureaucratic and sometimes inept, did not lose this money - it was just illegally re-appropriated.
[edit on 27/11/2009 by Iamonlyhuman]
