Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco"
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@Qrayon I've been tracking the DoD budget since 1984. To lose $1 trillion, you would have to lose all of the budget for several years back then, with no pay to any employees or military personnel, no weapons systems, nothing paid for at all. To lose $1 trillion over 10 years, you would need to lose $100 billion every year. If you knew how hard each dollar is fought for by the services, you would quickly see how preposterous this claim is. You can go down the line item list of major programs and see where the money goes. Ships, aircraft, space systems, vehicles, infrastructure, operating and maintenance costs, and personnel aren't cheap.
But again, when was the last time we audited Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid? Where does all the money go from illegals paying into SS, Medicare, and Medicaid?
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@Qrayon It's pretty basic math. You can't have trillions missing if you didn't get extra trillions cumulatively even decades prior to that. You would have to manufacture trillions out of thin air, which was never allocated to DoD. Each fiscal year is a finite budget to fund DoD.
Look at the DoD budget timeline Y2Y. There simply isn't anywhere to lose even $1 trillion. DoD budget was pretty flat in the 1960s-1970s, at $49-$84 Billion/yr. It broke through $112B/yr in 1978. It broke through $200B/yr in the '80s ($221B in 1984), and $300B in the '90s, never exceeding $400B/yr until after 9/11/2001.
So now start adding. There's no mathematical way to come up with Rumsfeld's numbers unless you make $230B disappear every year for 10 years, which is preposterous when the budget was only $143-$320B/yr from 1980-2000.
Since every funded program and O&M costs were what they were, there simply was no room for that to happen. You're talking about a continual gargantuan accounting fraud, while simultaneously having contractors deliver aircraft carriers, submarines, heavy cargo lift aircraft, B-1Bs, stealth bombers, satellites, thousands of fighters, tanks, APCs, IFVs, base housing all over the world, depots, nukes, missiles, bombs, ammunition, uniforms, boots, and food for free. Then you would have to account for Healthcare costs, schools, military institutes, test facilities, and the O&M budget to operate and maintain all of the above, which is typically 3x the cost of acquisitions over the life of a program.
Those $49-$320B/yr budgets were spent on acquisitions, RDT&E, O&M, personnel, and services. Each fiscal year has detailed accounting for all the weapons systems, test programs, operations & maintenance, and contracted services. It's the most accountable portion of the entire Federal budget, unlike Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, HUD, DOEd, DOJ, EPA, IRS, FEMA, FDA, DHS, etc.
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@Qrayon You think DoD generates trillions of its own income through investments and real estate? Cite DoD self-generated income in the CAFR. I would love to read about that self-licking ice cream that Congress would have nothing to say about.
I do know there is waste, fraud, and abuse.
It's systemic but is used to prop up local economies with mostly services and ancillary business equipment not essential for RDT&E, systems acquisitions, or O&M.
Think low-skilled civilian personnel doing jobs that used to be additional duties for military personnel, or are simply obsolete.
Office buildings and warehouses that were built in the 1950s-1970s for long-gone programs, slowly evolving and surviving year-to-year without much oversight. Then there are the entitled service-based employees who sit around and do nothing, specializing in referring you to a different office who does the same.
There are armies of useless jobs and offices like this on military bases, having nothing to do with readiness, combat systems maintenance, or mission focus.
Even with the wildest accounting methods, they don't add up to $100 Billion, let alone trillions.
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