Where Did All The Money Go?
So it appears to be common knowledge to both the political class and the intelligentsia that the government has no money to spare. So it was a surprise to see McPaper, USA Today, reporting on a rather startling discovery (not startling at all) by USASpending.gov that our government actually does “waste” money. The site was set up, intending to make federal spending more transparent. That’s a laugh.
Well it sure did that – so transparent, it’s invisible.
See, what the site disseminated is that the government was “missing at least $619 billion from 302 to federal programs”.
Yep, you read that right – $619 billion! And I’ll bet that number is low – way low. I bet 50% of government spending is either misused, wasted or just goes “missing”.
USA Today continues, saying that the government “data that does exist is wildly inaccurate, according to the Government Accountability Office, which looked at 2012 spending data. Only 2% to 7% of spending data on USASpending.gov is ‘fully consistent with agencies records’, according to the report.”
Wait… What?! 2 to 7% is accurate?! So in other words, virtually all, about 95% of all government spending data is at the very least “inaccurate”.
Want an example? Health and Human Services, HHS, failed to report $544 billion. How do you just not report a half a trillion dollars? Easy – because the government has become so large that it is literally unaccountable to the people.
Want some more? USA Today writes that, “The Department of Interior did not report spending for 163 of its 265 assistance programs… The result: $5.3 billion in spending is missing…”, and for least 22% of all government contracts awarded, “the spending website literally doesn’t know where the money went.”
Frankly, this is quite literally criminal – and I do mean criminal – like jail time criminal.