One of the top 5 most important but under-reported stories of 2014 or 2015 is the failure of the federal government to complete either a general audit or the specific agency audits mandated by Congress. It should be indisputable, at this point, that the federal government’s spending habits are utterly and completely out-of-control. In the 90s and early 2000s, the Department of Defense (DoD) failed 7 GAO audits in a row and failed to account for more than $1 trillion in spending. In the decade since, and after continued Congressional orders and demands, the backlog and estimated un-accounted-for spending has grown to more than $8.5 Trillion! The General Accounting Office (GAO) estimates that the current backlog of 24,000 pending audits will NEVER be completed.
The fact that the federal government is completely out-of-control seems to cause nary a ripple in the population. The IRS demands, “under penalties of law…” that every household account for every penny they spend in their tax return each year. However, the federal government thumbs their nose at all Americans every day and says, “Bugger off!” in their own accounting to the people.
Yet, nothing happens. No one is accountable. No one is fired. No one is jailed. In the closing days of the now-obvious, crumbling American empire, it’s simply ignored and added to the ever growing pile of unresolved issues. Congressmen and women throw their hands in the air and say, “There’s nothing I can do!” Then, the turn right around and vote for the next level of spending and programs to continue to throw good money after bad.
Then there’s the non-federal “Federal” Reserve Corporation that can create, with a keyboard stroke, and lend $9 trillion somewhere without any public accountability. There’s the tens and hundreds of $billions lost in “reconstruction” of Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans have largely become immune and pay no-never-mind to all the fraud going on around them every day.
For just one example, Afghanistan, the IEEE Spectrum magazine did an investigation into the restoration of the Afghan electrical grid. The examination revealed that virtually the entire $60 billion spent on the electrical grid was wasted. The power plants were never fired up or even connected to the grid. The ones that were could only deliver electricity at 5 times or more the cost of electricity in the US, so will be abandoned almost immediately since the Afghan people cannot afford the cost. Some generation plants were built so far off the grid that there is no way to get fuel to them. Or, the grid itself was improperly constructed and truckloads of money siphoned-off by corrupt contractors and government officials.
In the other waste, military commands and installations were constructed only to be abandoned, fleets of vehicles and other equipment delivered, only to sit and rust in the sand. The scale of the waste and fraud is so enormous it defies any real descriptive to encompass the extent. This goes on every where in the world the US has been or is involved in any kind of military or humanitarian effort. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been fraught with every kind of fraud imaginable for decades.
That is without even considering the same behaviors going on here at home in the US. More billions are lost to Food Stamp (SNAP) fraud, welfare fraud, Social Security fraud, tax fraud, subsidy and loan fraud of every kind imaginable! It is now so thoroughly embedded into the fabric of society that it corrupts virtually every aspect of economic life in America today. And still, most Americans move along in a sheep-like trance doing mostly whatever it is government tells them to do; work, pay your taxes, going into debt; become dependent, then die to be replaced by your children.
It almost begs the question: How long will Americans continue to go along with being treated like cattle; feeding, putting on weight being herded up and slaughtered year-after-year for the tax revenue? Then, their good name used to sell their children into debt slavery for generations for a totally corrupt federal government?
How long?