In just one year, the Pentagon has racked up $35 trillion in “accounting changes” which served to feed the beast of the military-industrial complex. These accounting adjustments made last year by the Pentagon total an amount that’s larger than the entire U.S. economy.

It also shows just how disturbingly lackadaisical the government is and underscores the Defense Department’s continuing difficulty in balancing its books.  To make matters even more horrifying, the figure dwarfs the $738 billion of defense-related funding in the latest United States budget, a spending plan that includes the most expensive weapons systems in the world including the F-35 jet as well as new aircraft carriers, destroyers, and submarines, according to Bloomberg.

“Within that $30 trillion is a lot of double, triple, and quadruple counting of the same money as it got moved between accounts,” said Todd Harrison, a Pentagon budget expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The “combined errors, shorthand, and sloppy record-keeping by DoD accountants do add up to a number nearly 1.5 times the size of the U.S. economy,” said Speier, a California Democrat. The report shows the Pentagon “employs accounting adjustments like a contractor paints over mold. Their priority is making the situation look manageable, not solving the underlying problem,” she said.

The GAO estimated based on a sample that at least 96% of 181,947 automatic adjustments made in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 “didn’t have adequate supporting documentation.”

“In layman’s terms, this means that the DoD made adjustments to accounting records without having documentation to support the need or amount for the adjustment,” said Dwrena Allen, spokeswoman for the Pentagon’s inspector general. “The size and scope of unsupported adjustments is deeply concerning because it tells a story of poor internal controls and lack of financial data integrity.” –Bloomberg

Imagine if someone made “accounting changes” to their theft paperwork tax return in order to not have to feed this beast? The blowback would be unbelievable.  This is just one more reason why humans should rethink their consent to be enslaved by the government’s military-industrial complex and ruling class politicians.