The scope of waste and fraud is staggering

[Balog]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/18/us-usa-pentagon-waste-specialreport-idUSBRE9AH0LQ20131118

I don't even know what to say about this. Simply ridiculous.

[roo_ster]

1. Any bureaucracy gets less efficient over time.  The US Army is a bureaucracy over 200 years old.  From what I have seen, yes, the Army is awful in these ways, but better than almost any other on Earth.
2. Absolutely NONE of the gov't departments could manage their books the way Congress requires of business.
3. Simplification/streamlining makes graft and theft harder, so it is rarely done.
4. Black programs get their budgets stuffed into on-the-books programs, inflating their apparent cost or getting the "plug" treatment.  This is really special, when an officer is talking to congress about his program, that had to increase in cost by 25% to hide Black Program, and he gets berated by a congressional stooge, who is read on to that program and knows why the costs went goofy.
5. More of same ^^^.

I don't have hte answer.  Maybe forcing all gov't departments to comply with Sarbox and each Sec of Whatever and Congressional Chairman (House and Senate) being on the hook like a CEO for prison time if they get it wrong.

[brimic]

I don't have hte answer.  Maybe forcing all gov't departments to comply with Sarbox and each Sec of Whatever and Congressional Chairman (House and Senate) being on the hook like a CEO for prison time if they get it wrong.

No, you actually have the answer.

[dm1333]

Congress in 2009 passed a law requiring that the Defense Department be audit-ready by 2017. Then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in 2011 tightened the screws when ordered that the department make a key part of its books audit-ready in 2014.

You have no idea the burden this puts on some units.  The last station I commanded accounted for every cent of our budget and spent down within 1/2 % of that budget.  But because of all of the problems throughout the military a simple 1 page procurement request has 4 checklist's that go with it.  Some of them are multiple page checklists.  What used to take a Storekeeper 15 minutes now takes about an hour.

Mariano was charged more than five years after the allegations against him first emerged in a 2006 civil whistleblower lawsuit in federal court in Georgia that had been kept under seal. Court documents suggest one reason why the conspiracy went undetected for so long: The Navy not only gave Mariano authority to award money to contractors; it also put him in charge of confirming that the contractors did the work. The Navy never audited any of the contracts until after Mariano was arrested, a Navy spokeswoman confirmed.

Every single travel claim I submitted in the last year has been audited.  Except for the PCS claim that has been pending since August through no fault of my own.  And once that claim finally gets approved I am going to get audited for that one too since it is over$2500.  But not a single one of this guys contracts was audited until AFTER he was arrested?      

edit: one of the 4 checklists is a checklist to make sure the checklists are filled out correctly! 

[Firethorn]

edit: one of the 4 checklists is a checklist to make sure the checklists are filled out correctly! 

Gah, so much this.  At least on my level, we spend more money making sure we're spending our money efficiently than we actually spend buying stuff.

[HankB]

Any time I see a post about .mil spending I'm reminded of an interview I saw on TV a long time ago with the officer (IIRC a Col. or Lt. Col) who was in charge of some big Army supply depot. The reporter asked about some crates stacked outside the warehouse - they weren't under shelter because the warehouse was FULL. So he asked what was in the crates . . .

Engines. Spare engines. For vehicles that the army had stopped using a decade before. When asked WHY there were so many spares, the officer responded that the Senator from Ohio, who was on the armed services committee, insisted that the army continue buying these spares because the manufacturer was in Ohio and made campaign contributions.

The officer also showed that we had a supply of mohair - added to every year - for much the same reason. Even though mohair hadn't been used for sleeping bags, parkas, or anything else for decades. There were other examples, too . . .

I'll bet that officer never made General.

[Ben]

Gah, so much this.  At least on my level, we spend more money making sure we're spending our money efficiently than we actually spend buying stuff.

Yup. At some point I'm going to get busted and have my purchase card revoked because half the time that I need to buy something, I do a quick web search for the lowest price and end up buying off Amazon or somewhere. For all micropurchases (<$3000) if one of the GSA sites, or the "mandatory" sellers (women, vets, minorities, prisons) have what I need at the equivalent or lower price, and the equivalent or higher quality, I'm happy to purchase from them (it is rare that they do, they are almost always a higher price). Otherwise my duty is best value for the government (i.e., taxpayers) so I shop for the office the same way I shop for myself, rules be damned.

[Boomhauer]

I used to work for the federal .gov. The purchasing was complete and utter *expletive deleted*ing idiocy...and then there were the calls at the end of the fiscal year to go spend $15-50k that day...

My state agency is much better. We buy only what we absolutely need, and we don't have wild spending sprees at the end of the fiscal year. Any money we do happen to have left over is rolled over to the next year. Of course that's the difference between operating something as a business would vs. getting lots of tax dollars to squander.

[makattak]

I used to work for the federal .gov. The purchasing was complete and utter *expletive deleted* idiocy...and then there were the calls at the end of the fiscal year to go spend $15-50k that day...

My state agency is much better. We buy only what we absolutely need, and we don't have wild spending sprees at the end of the fiscal year. Any money we do happen to have left over is rolled over to the next year. Of course that's the difference between operating something as a business would vs. getting lots of tax dollars to squander.

That's because the Federal Government has a lot of money to spend and if you aren't going to waste it, they'll give it to someone who knows how to waste it better.

[vaskidmark]

That's because the Federal Government has a lot of money to spend and if you aren't going to waste it, they'll give it to someone who knows how to waste it better.

And then cut your next budget allocation by the amount you did not squander.  Or more.

And there are contests to see who can spend the closest to  budget.  One year, after making last-minute purchases of enough copy paper and paper clips to last the program 5 years, I was $0.34 short of actually zeroing out.  Sent my secretary to the PO to buy a stamp - justified it by saying it was needed to mail the budget report to the fed agency providing the grant funding for the program.  That earned us 3 extra staff slots at next year's national conference, plus compensation for meals not provided by the conference (generally dinners) - with no stinking per diem limits.

stay safe.

[dogmush]

Yup. At some point I'm going to get busted and have my purchase card revoked because half the time that I need to buy something, I do a quick web search for the lowest price and end up buying off Amazon or somewhere. For all micropurchases (<$3000) if one of the GSA sites, or the "mandatory" sellers (women, vets, minorities, prisons) have what I need at the equivalent or lower price, and the equivalent or higher quality, I'm happy to purchase from them (it is rare that they do, they are almost always a higher price). Otherwise my duty is best value for the government (i.e., taxpayers) so I shop for the office the same way I shop for myself, rules be damned.

I have pre typed "Sole Source Justification" memos. Just pull one out, fill in the vendor, and item purchased, date it, sign it and staple to the 516R.  Bingo instant "mission requires purchase outside mandatory sources of supply".  I do it for every GPC purchase I make to make it through my audits.