It is a common Pentagon practice to "regularly cheat on its
accounting books" by submitting a falsely balanced budget to the
Treasury…
For several years, if not decades, Republicans have,
and still do, claim that any American who is not anti-government,
anti-taxation, anti-women’s rights, anti-immigration, anti-theocracy,
and anti-democracy is a raving socialist. Cruz accused
Hillary Clinton of being a “
wild-eyed socialist” who will do
serious damage to America, and it is so typical for a Republican to use
that term because they know most Americans are ignorant of what
socialism entails. Socialism is simply “
an economic and political
system where all major industries are owned and controlled by the
government rather than by individual companies or people, or a societal
system in which there is no private property.” Obviously, neither
Hillary Clinton, nor any Democrat supports or advocates for socialism,
including Senator Bernie Sanders who claims to be a democratic
socialist. In fact, democratic socialism
is “
a
political ideology involving a combination of political democracy with
government ownership and control of all major industries.” Bernie Sanders is not any kind of socialist; not even a democratic socialist.
What most Americans are woefully ignorant of is that
there is a socialistic program that Republicans not only advocate for,
they are never at a loss for investing more taxpayer dollars into it
with no return except for a growing deficit; one that will eventually
break America like the former Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War.
To make matters that much worse, and it is that much worse, the Republican’s
favorite socialist program has completely lost track of where $8.5
trillion in taxpayer and borrowed money because the Department of
Defense has no accountability to the American people or apparently the
government that owns and operates it. The worst part is that despite
this country’s only wasteful, unaccountable, and out-of-control
socialistic program, Republicans want to sink more of Americans’ tax
dollars into the defense budget.
It was barely
reported
again last January that after Congress had just allotted well over half
the entire annual federal budget for the military, that the Department
of Defense could not account for over $8.5 trillion between 2000 and
2012. In 2005, for example, the Department of Defense had contracts
worth a bit over $3 trillion with various businesses, but the United
States Treasury Department could not find any record of how those
trillions of dollars, both taxpayer money and trillions borrowed, was
actually spent. Apparently, it is a common Pentagon practice to “
regularly cheat on its accounting books” by submitting a falsely balanced budget to the Treasury; in 2012 the Pentagon falsely reported
“$9.22 billion to reconcile its spending with its budget.” And Republicans want to give the Defense Department even more money than over half the nation’s spending.
It is not that the Defense Department (DoD) is not
required to do a full accounting of where every single penny of borrowed
and taxpayer money goes. In 1990, Congress passed a then-new federal
law requiring all government agencies to be audited, but the Pentagon,
the only American socialist entity, is the only government agency that
has
failed
to comply with the law because it is the military, national defense,
support the troops, patriotism and war on terror. In fact, for the very
same reason the DoD is allowed to lose $8.5 trillion without a national
outcry is why Republicans constantly demand more money for the military.
What should be astonishing is that despite “reckless accounting” and “consistently fraudulent reporting,”
there has been no investigations into where trillions-of-dollars of
both borrowed and taxpayer dollars have disappeared, or who is
responsible for increasing the deficit. There was a pathetic attempt to
curb the Defense Department’s waste and bring some transparency to the
nation’s only socialist program by mandating a reduction in weapons
programs if the DoD fails to meet its budget, but socialist or not it is
the military and Republicans want more funding despite the waste and
fraud. The Government Accountability Office as well as the Department of
Defense’s own inspector general admit that the lack of accountability
makes it incredibly easy to conceal “outright fraud and inappropriate purchases” that also “affects military personnel’s salaries.”
There has been an effort to revamp the Department of
Defense’s accounting system within two years, by 2017, but because it
is a government owned and operated socialist “industry” there are
absolutely no legal consequences or mechanisms in place to hold anyone
responsible. Some leading officials claim that the only way to force the
Pentagon to “straighten out” and “be accountable” like every other agency is if there was a means to bring “outside pressure to bear”
from Washington, but with Republicans in control of Congress and the
nation’s purse-strings, and crusading to increase defense spending, that
is never going to happen; their campaign donors in the oil industry and
military industrial complex will not allow it.
Republicans demand accountability from every
government agency to devise new and devious means to cut spending under
the guise of deficit reduction. However, the one and only socialist
entity in the nation is not only unaccountable to the people, including
losing $8.5 trillion over ten years, it is piling on debt like there is
no tomorrow. It is important to remember, that Bush-Republicans started
two completely unnecessary wars of aggression against Muslims for regime
change without regard for funding or the deficit.
It is an abomination that while Republicans refuse
to spend one penny for infrastructure, domestic programs, education, or
renewable energy due to “America being broke,” they easily hand
over half of the nation’s spending to a socialist program without any
accountability. And it is pathetic that there is no major media outcry
that literally trillions of dollars have gone missing while the Defense
Department refuses to say where that borrowed and taxpayer money went.
Something that every American should consider is that the $8.5 trillion
the Pentagon “lost” represents over a third of the entire national debt,
but that is just the money they will not, or cannot, account for.
Trillions more, like “known waste such as $1.5 trillion for the F35,”
of the deficit has been reported accurately and went to Republican
military industrial complex donors and the national deficit.
Over
the next sixteen months of an already incredibly long presidential
campaign, every Republican seeking the nomination and candidate for
Congress will scream that defense spending is woefully inadequate and
call for a monumental increase; all while decrying that Democrats are
socialists and call for domestic spending cuts. Democrats, no matter the
office they seek, have to start explaining to voters exactly what
socialism means, and point out that the one and only program that
Republicans want more borrowed and taxpayer money for is the socialist
Department of Defense despite it cannot account for $8.5 trillion that
is gone forever but still has to be repaid.
