Anonymous 03/06/18 (Tue) 00:48:58 1838c6 No.

563513

Ok so the national debt is about 21 trillion, and this MSU student found 21
trillion gone in unauthorized spending, meanwhile nearly every politician
has amassed a small fortune at the expense of their constituents, at what
point do we realize this is taxation without representation?

https:// msutoday.msu.edu/news/2017/msu-scholars-find-21-trillion-in-
unauthorized-government-spending-defense-department-to-conduct/

Business + Life

Published: Dec. 11, 2017

MSU SCHOLARS FIND $21 TRILLION IN UNAUTHORIZED

GOVERNMENT SPENDING; DEFENSE DEPARTMENT TO CONDUCT
FIRST-EVER AUDIT

Contact(s): Mark Skidmore, Andy Henion

Earlier this year, a Michigan State University economist, working with

graduate students and a former government official, found $21 trillion in
unauthorized spending in the departments of Defense and Housing and
Urban Development for the years 1998-2015.

The work of Mark Skidmore and his team, which included digging into
government websites and repeated queries to U.S. agencies that went
unanswered, coincided with the Office of Inspector General, at one point,
disabling the links to all key documents showing the unsupported spending.
(Luckily, the researchers downloaded and stored the documents.)

Now, the Department of Defense has announced it will conduct the first
department-wide, independent financial audit in its history (read the Dec. 7
announcement here).

The Defense Department did not say specifically what led to the audit. But
the announcement came four days after Skidmore discussed his team’s
findings on USAWatchdog, a news outlet run by former CNN and ABC
News correspondent Greg Hunter.

“While we can’t know for sure what role our efforts to compile original
government documents and share them with the public has played, we
believe it may have made a difference,” said Skidmore, the Morris Chair in
State and Local Government Finance and Policy at MSU.

Skidmore got involved last spring when he heard Catherine Austin Fitts,
former assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development, refer to a
report which indicated the Army had $6.5 trillion in unsupported
adjustments, or spending, in fiscal 2015. Given the Army’s $122 billion
budget, that meant unsupported adjustments were 54 times spending
authorized by Congress. Typically, such adjustments in public budgets are
only a small fraction of authorized spending.

Skidmore thought Fitts had made a mistake. “Maybe she meant $6.5 billion
and not $6.5 trillion,” he said. “So I found the report myself and sure
enough it was $6.5 trillion.”

Skidmore and Fitts agreed to work together to investigate the issue further.
Over the summer, two MSU graduate students searched government
websites, especially the website of the Office of Inspector General, looking
for similar documents dating to 1998. They found documents indicating a
total $21 trillion in undocumented adjustments over the 1998-2015
period. (The original government documents and a report describing the
issue can be found here.)

In a Dec. 8 Forbes column he co-authored with Laurence Kotlikoff,

Skidmore said the “gargantuan nature” of the undocumented federal
spending “should be a great concern to all taxpayers.”

“Taken together these reports point to a failure to comply with basic

constitutional and legislative requirements for spending and disclosure,” the
column concludes. “We urge the House and Senate Budget Committee to
initiate immediate investigations of unaccounted federal expenditures as
well as the source of their payment.”

https://usawatchdog.com/missing-21-trillion-means-federal-government-is-
lawless-dr-mark-skidmore/

Missing $21 Trillion Means Federal Government Is Lawless – Dr. Mark

Skidmore

By Greg Hunter On December 3, 2017 In Political Analysis 176 Comments

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com (Early Sunday Release)

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.”

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Professor Mark Skidmore of

Michigan State University, as he talks about $21 trillion in missing money
from the U.S. federal budget.

(To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here)

After the Interview:

Dr. Skidmore says, “If the American people don’t stand up and say this is
unacceptable, nothing is going to happen. This is just wrong.”

To find out more about Dr. Mark Skidmore, click here. To look at the
documents he used to uncover $21 trillion in missing federal money, go
to Solari.com and search the term “Missing Money” or simply click
here. Dr. Skidmore copied all the documents he used for research and put
them on Solari.com with the permission of its founder Catherine Austin
Fitts.