Quote Originally Posted by MattC86 View Post
This is getting beyond small wars and into "the bureaucracy of a large government: why it sucks," ...

It's been said over and over, and there's a tendency to ignore it, but if proper accounting practices and defense contract discipline were put in place at DoD (and throughout the government as a whole) they could spend enough to make even the Air Force happy and still cut the current budget.
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Just like granite state said, so much of it is domestic politics and makes no economic sense. If any corporation, responsible to its stockholders, was run the way our government (and especially the Pentagon) is, the CEO and Board of Directors would have been fired and probably defenestrated.

And theoretically, the stockholders of the US government are US citizens. Accountability is simply a fiscal necessity.

Matt
A number of people have for many years tried to get the US Government to drop its beyond extremely opaque and arcane accounting system and move to simple double entry GAAP. All have failed. They failed because Congress does not want that opacity removed, they like the ability they have to fiddle...

The nominal CEO is the President, the Board is Congress. Both are elected and the US Citizens as shareholders are the voters of record. Ergo...