The Fiscal Insanity of the US Military Industrial Complex
Article by Beren Goguen (human); art by Midjourney
Tomorrow, I’ll be paying a “skilled tax preparation specialist” to assist me with filing a return, making sure my family didn’t accidentally skimp ‘ol Uncle Sam on his cut of the cabbage.
As it often does, this annual ritual has me wondering: How exactly have my tax dollars been spent?
So I Google.
Well, in the case of the U.S. military industrial complex, nobody knows for sure.
My inquiry led to a lively C-SPAN clip of Jon Stewart debating the Deputy Secretary of Defense on military budget/spending and the 2022 failed audit. She's an incredibly smug megalomaniac, but Jon keeps his cool (a skill he’s honed over 2+ decades of debating all manner of morally vacant soulless husks, from Tucker Carlson to Bill O'Reilly to an absolutely brutal gun control convo with with Oklahoma State Sen. Nathan Dahm).
“If I give you a billion dollars and you can’t tell me what happened to it, that to me is wasteful. That means you are not responsible.”
Like me, Jon asks sensible questions, to which there appear to be no sensible answers.
The Googling continued, providing a quick summary on the state of affairs from The Hill:
"After 1,600 auditors combed through DOD’s $3.5 trillion in assets and $3.7 trillion in liabilities, officials found that the department couldn’t account for about 61 percent of its assets, Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord told reporters (last November)."
Holdup. They can't account for 2 trillion in assets?
I’m no accountant, but that seems like more than a slight bookkeeping error.
Now, let’s say I accidentally skimp the IRS on a few doubloons this year because I forget something and they catch it later. That audit gonna come down like a ten-ton hammer. I will get slapped with a fine and back taxes. Basically, my ass is grass and Uncle Sam is the lawnmower.
And yet the DOD can misplace two trillion and shrug it off?
How has this level of fiduciary negligence become acceptable, let alone SOP for the United States government?
It can only be two things: extreme negligence or corruption (probably both).
What's truly incredible is that, despite trillions in funding, the US military industrial complex still can't adequately take care of veterans (let alone has potentially discriminated against black service members), which is utterly shameful. Yet somehow multinational defense conglomerates like Raytheon continue to receive billions to build modern war gadgets and other nifty stuff we likely don't need (and continue paying board members and high-level execs millions in salary and sweet benis). Oh, and meanwhile, the national debt keeps climbing into the stratosphere (but nobody wants to talk about that unless the economy is about to fall off a cliff).
Foreshadowing? I certainly hope not.
Anyhow, here’s my common sense proposal: Take away every cent that the Pentagon can't account for (2 trillion to start) and divert those funds into:
Ensuring all veterans and their families receive adequate healthcare (including mental healthcare)
Supporting K-12 public education (including free breakfast and lunch for every school-aged child)
Fixing our utterly broken healthcare system
Funding cancer, diabetes, and other chronic disease research
Funding environmental conservation/restoration projects to fight climate change
Require the IRS to prepare taxpayer returns for them at no cost (with the option to do your own, if you prefer, for a small rebate)
And maybe reduce the overall budget deficit a skosh?
Rinse/repeat annually and watch the magic happen.
Guaranteed the DOD starts to pass those audits with flying colors real fast!
