Military vet from the 70's. The Pentagon's budget has been a black hole for a lot longer than that. And every September, every organization spent any remaining money in the budget so that they got more, not less the following year. If you didn't need what you bought, you warehoused it and paid for storage. It's the culture. I believe in funding the best military in the world, but if they really let DOGE go after all the fraud and waste, there'd be money to fix an awful lot of other stuff. Just sayin'.
The one-way ratchet of government budgets. Near impossible to reverse, if ever. Makes the DOGE audits all that more impressive in their effectiveness. I've heard that the Pentagon maintains two sets of accounting books. I bet even the closer-to-reality unofficial book does not record the unacknowledged Special Access Programs.
Military vet from the 70's. The Pentagon's budget has been a black hole for a lot longer than that. And every September, every organization spent any remaining money in the budget so that they got more, not less the following year. If you didn't need what you bought, you warehoused it and paid for storage. It's the culture. I believe in funding the best military in the world, but if they really let DOGE go after all the fraud and waste, there'd be money to fix an awful lot of other stuff. Just sayin'.
The one-way ratchet of government budgets. Near impossible to reverse, if ever. Makes the DOGE audits all that more impressive in their effectiveness. I've heard that the Pentagon maintains two sets of accounting books. I bet even the closer-to-reality unofficial book does not record the unacknowledged Special Access Programs.