Loading ...President Donald Trump has spent campaign rally after campaign rally touting his success by fully funding the American military.
“We are taking care of our veterans and our military will soon be more powerful than it has ever been before and because of that incredible power, hopefully, we will never have to use it, right?” Trump told supporters in Biloxi, Mississippi last week.
“We secured through the help of Lindsey Graham and everybody. Roger, we secured $700 billion and $716 billion to fully rebuild our great United States military and we gave our great warriors their largest pay raise in more than a decade,” Trump claimed.
The Pentagon finally allowed an audit. The results, however, showed that the Pentagon had a rough go of it, according to the New York Times.
“We failed the audit,” Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told reporters. “We never expected to pass it.”
The world’s largest military has $2.7 trillion in weapons, property, bases and whatnot. They have $2.6 trillion in liabilities, like people, personnel and retirees. Auditors have no idea where all the money went due to “flaws” in the IT.
The Times noted that American tax dollars being sent to the military to fund boondoggles would be bad enough, but the federal budget deficit soared to $779 billion, and the military still needs more money.
On the plus side, most of the Army Corps of Engineers and the Military Retirement Fund passed their audits. It was the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines and most other divisions that failed.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis helped organize the team that opened the books if only he could figure out where the money is leaking out and where it’s disappearing. Instead, the president wants to throw more money at the military. While the Pentagon managed to convince him not to hold a vast military parade with tanks rolling through Washington, DC, it’s unclear if they’ll be able to put him in the two years left in his term.
