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I love the “spend smarter” bullshit when the Pentagon has failed 6 straight audits — and there have only been 6. The audits aren’t even hard to pass. There’s nothing about no-bid contracts, cost-plus contracts, or any Military-Industrial-Complex-related corruption.
If we actually “spent smarter,” nearly a trillion dollars a year1 would be fucking plenty. It’s already twice as much as Russia and China combined.
1 Probably over a trillion if you count the Department of Veterans Affairs, intelligence agencies, and other military-related things that aren’t under DoD.
I'd like to belive there is a shadow Stargate war or something like independence day but naaa govt to dumb to pull it off. It's laundering.
Surely that's some of it it no doubt... but also a terrifying possibility is that they legit don't know at all, like it's a real money hole that stuff comes in vs. out and they have no idea at all where it went... (as opposed to someone knowing but not wanting to say)
It’s debt by a thousand cuts. Congress doesn’t want to know because most states have lucrative defense contractors helping prop up their economy.
DoD contract obligations, payroll spending, and grant awards in the 50 states and the District of Columbia totaled $558.7 billion, which is 2.2 percent of the country's gross domestic product. If the total spending were divided across every U.S. resident, it would amount to $1,679 per U.S. citizen. Of those funds, $389.5 billion (70 percent) were spent on contracts for products and services, $159.4 billion (28 percent) paid the salaries of DoD personnel, and $9.7 billion (2 percent) were awarded as grants.
Virginia, Texas, and California topped the list of recipients for overall defense spending. However, Virginia, Hawaii, and Connecticut ranked highest when considering defense spending relative to their respective state GDPs.
The top ten states for total Defense spending in Fiscal Year 2022 were:
Rank State Defense Spending (billions) 1 Virginia $62.7 2 Texas $58.0 3 California $56.2 4 Florida $30.2 5 New York $28.1 6 Maryland $26.4 7 Connecticut $22.3 8 Pennsylvania $17.9 9 Massachusetts $15.2 10 Arizona $15.0 Texas, Connecticut, and North Carolina had the largest overall increases in DoD spending from Fiscal Year 2021 to 2022.
Source (actually the government funny enough)
That doesn't mean that Congress doesn't want to know where all that money went though. It does mean that it's too big to fail, and too big to jail.
Would likely be more effective to audit the military than to tax the rich.