$21 trillion unaccounted for in federal budget over 20 year period

12-3-2017  Michigan State University economics professor 

Mark Skidmore made an astounding discovery about the finances and budgets of the U.S. federal government earlier this year.  He and a team of graduate students discovered $21 trillion missing in the federal budget going back to 1998.  Dr. Skidmore who specializes in public finance explains, “We know from official government sources that indicate $21 trillion is, in some way, unaccounted for.  Furthermore if we come back to the Constitution, all spending needs to be authorized by Congress.  It looks to me, and I think I can conclude with a high degree of certainty, there is money flowing in as well as out that is unaccounted for. . . . That’s the one thing we know from these documents, that there is $21 trillion in unaccounted funds.”

  In one example Skidmore found a huge transfer from the Treasury Department to the Army that again was not authorized.  Keep in mind, the Army has an approved budget of  a little more than $120 billion a year.  Skidmore says, “In this one report . . . there is an appendix table that indicates there was a transfer from Treasury to the Army of about $800 billion.  That’s almost a trillion dollars flowing in.  There is a note that says we had to do this in order to reconcile past years.  That doesn’t make sense to me either because these earlier years you have a transfer from the Treasury of your $120 billion or $130 billion, and every year the Army is granted the authority to spend this money in the ways they say they will.  How can you get (an additional) $800 billion in and call that an ‘adjustment’? I tried to call and talk to the office of the Inspector General to talk to the people who helped generate these reports.  I haven’t been successful, and I stopped trying when they disabled the links.”

  You heard correctly.  The government cut off inspection of their own financial accounting to the public.  Skidmore says, “I have been able to talk to a few people.  I tried calling the Congressional Budget Office.  I talked with somebody at the GAO and one or two people at the Office of the Inspector General who were generating these reports. . . .It’s a big question in why don’t people want to look at this?  I am just a blue collar economist at Michigan State University, and I am saying this does not make sense to me.  Why don’t we look at this? . . . Some high-ranking government official authorized the disabling of all the links to the key documents.  We know that.”

  Dr. Skidmore thinks the federal accounting of $21 trillion in missing money is crazy and far outside the realm of normal.  So is this a legitimate U.S. national security issue?  Dr. Skidmore says, “Yeah, and that is one of the reasons I decided to look at this.  How can this be, and what does this mean?   If trillions of dollars are flowing in and flowing out, it appears to be outside of our Constitution and outside of the rule of law.  If that is the case, that really is troubling because it suggests that there is a layer of things happening that are outside the rule of law.  I know for example that some activities just for the sake of protection of the people involved in national security have to be black budget.  There is always stuff like that.  Usually it’s authorized spending, and some percentage is this black budget where only a small percentage of people and some in Congress know about it, but this is way outside of that.  So I am worried about it.”   https://usawatchdog.com/missing-21-trillion-means-federal-government-is-lawless-dr-mark-skidmore/