Last week, headlines blared with claims that the Defense Department had failed to spend $28 billion in time, forfeiting all that money back to the US Treasury.
The story said the Pentagon had “let $28 billion go to waste,” with “tens of billions of dollars unspent” as “time ran out.”
This would be an awesome and scandalous story, were it true. Fortunately, it’s not. Just about all of this $28 billion in taxpayer funds will be spent. What this story really highlights is the arcane complexity of the budget execution process at the world’s largest organization. The Pentagon receives a lot of criticism on many different topics, but this is one instance in which piling on is unwarranted.
Keep reading this article at: https://breakingdefense.com/2019/01/no-the-pentagon-did-not-waste-28-billion/