After an audit found that the Department of Defense couldn't account for $6.5 trillion in non-black-budget spending, Michigan State University State and Local Government Finance and Policy Chair Mark Skidmore assembled a team to audit the Housing and Urban Development agency, uncovering $351 million more in "undocumented adjustments" to HUDs spending since 1998.
While government budgets can be complex, our government, like any business, can track receipts and payments and share this information in ways that can be understood by the public. The ongoing occurrence and gargantuan nature of unsupported, i.e., undocumented, U.S. federal government expenditures as well as sources of funding for these expenditures should be a great concern to all tax payers.Taken together these reports point to a failure to comply with basic Constitutional and legislative requirements for spending and disclosure. We urge the House and Senate Budget Committee to initiate immediate investigations of unaccounted federal expenditures as well as the source of their payment.
Has Our Government Spent $21 Trillion Of Our Money Without Telling Us? [ Laurence Kotlikoff and Mark Skidmore/Forbes]
MSU scholars find $21 trillion in unauthorized government spending; Defense Department to conduct first-ever audit
[Mark Skidmore and Andy Henion/Michigan State University]
(Image: Tracy O, CC-BY-SA)
