Okay, so you're telling me, it's practical for Congress to hold a vote every time some government agency - not even the DOD, just anybody - needs to move a few million dollars around. Out of a $4 trillion budget. Holding a vote on the actual square root of the budget. That's silly. If the government had to do that, they'd be doing nothing but holding votes over gravel, screws and gasoline, all the time.
No. I'm saying for a for a few years, they won't have broad reprogramming powers. They'll still be able to do some of it, but not for things like this.
There aren't any loopholes. Reprogramming is not a loophole. It's Congress empowering the executive. The DoD reprogramming funds to build a small section of wall is perfectly legal under reprogramming. It's likely even consistent with the spirit of reprogramming as part of the FY2019 NDAA / Defense Budget, both of which were passed last year, before the House was taken by the Democrats. Which means that the DoD can rightly claim they are operating under the authorization granted to them by the Congress that funded the current budget, and the Congress in place now, disagreeing with that authorization, will have an opportunity to change that as part of the next budget.
This is the rules at work, in other words.
Oh I'm well aware. But you honestly expect an organ of government that goes through $800 billion a year to not lose huge amounts of money? I'm not. And keep in mind, we're talking an audit, which refers to assets.
The military keeping track of exactly how much it has of something - the vast numbers of types things in its inventory - is going to be intrinsically complicated. And part of it has to do with definitions too, which is what follow ups to those stories dealt with. Does the DoD for example, count the USS Kitty Hawk as an asset? It's been moored in reserve for a decade. It could theoretically be reactivated in about a year or so. Its held just for that purpose. Is it likely to happen? No. Does it have value? Yes. So does it get counted? Or consider the Army's tank inventory. Does the US Army have 8000, 5000 or 2500 tanks? That's largely a matter of definition. There are 800 M1s of various versions around the world, about 3000 of which haven't been taken out of storage since the 1990s and without the latest upgrades to work with others, would be fairly useless. There is another 2500 of more modern ones in prepositioned stockpiles around the world. They're fairly up to date, but not exactly driven ever day. They're there to be used, though they'll need servicing. And then there's 2500 tanks that are all the most modern and taken care of, and they're the ones the US Army uses every week around the globe. So what's the right answer? 8000 which includes tanks not driven since the 1990s? 5000, which includes tanks that are there in case of emergency? Or 2500, which is just what the army regularly uses? DO the theoretically flyable B-52s in the Boneyard count? The Air Force has reactivated two in the last few years to replace B-52s lost in accidents. But most of those haven't flown since the 1990s also.
You start throwing in missiles, and aircraft and facilities, and the number goes way up.
Any way, you're Russian. America "losing" stuff it paid for in the DoD budget is mostly an accounting concern. As a Russian, well...
Losing military shit is pretty much what the Russian military is known for.
Those last few are Nuclear Radioisiotope Thermoelectric Generators, by the way. Maybe that's a sequel to Chernobyl. A miniseries about The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, where the American taxpayer paid billions of dollars to send a multinational, mostly Western team of experts to dismantle, dispose and clean up thousands of Soviet-Russian nuclear weapons-related assets (from ICBMs, to warheads to bombers to submarines) rather than let them sit out in the open and rust before who knows who decided to make off with them.
Now please tell me again how the Russian Federation isn't some successor remnant state sitting upon the ruin of a fallen empire. Tell me again how you people decided to "stop playing" at the Cold War again, like you were switching off your PS4 or something. I need a good laugh.