Academic audit of HUD budget finds $351 million in unaccounted-for spending since 1998

In other other words; tl;dr: unaccounted for.

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Word! At least it gets put back into the economy.

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Because that is what matters in Glaurung’s comment. The correction of 350Bn from Cory’s proclamation of 21Tn, that part is too insignificant to merit a second glance.

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I guess I’m too simple to understand. I’m preparing to do my taxes for my businesses, and since I pay cash for nothing I know where every penny went. How can the government not? Even if I don’t have a receipt, I know where it went. If it went to Home Depot I know it was for building supplies, not the electric bill. I don’t get it, or are they saying if they don’t have a PO and receipt it’s unaccounted for even if they know where it went?

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I’ll support your effort to get double your money back, but it still won’t change the subject to Cory and away from public waste and unaccountability. Maybe triple back?

Are you disappointed?

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I applaud your efforts to remain dedicated to a stalking-horse subject with no concern for actual facts. What’s a 6,000% error margin between friends, anyway?

Down with HUD! Hang them all!

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Daddy, what happens when a government ignores its own laws?

America, son. America.

Why on earth would he do that? He already KNOWS what’s in the pyramids!

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Oo, oo, I know the answer! Because you’re a responsible person and not a bloated bureaucracy.

Thank you for this. I was unfamiliar with piece until fairly recently. It sounds WAY more modern than any other Beethoven piece I know. of.

It cannot be “trillions.” This is ridiculous.

The HUD budget is on the order of $50 billion.

The entire US Government budget is on the order of $2-3 trillion. And losing $21 trillion since 1998 is about $2 trillion a year. The HUD budget is 100% of the US budget and it’s unaccounted for? Norman, coordinate.

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My pleasure.
There also is a lovely version by Bill Bailey; he provides some background to the piece and manages to make fun of it and show genuine appreciation at the same time.

That’s exactly it. You – or rather, your business structure – is too simple. Imagine you were getting audited by someone who was really suspicious. Oh, you know you bought building supplies at Home Depot? That’s great, now prove it please. And while you’re at it, please document that you got prior approval for the purchase, that you didn’t then turn around and resell the materials to avoid paying taxes on them, and – for bonus points, because in many cases this is a legal requirement for government agencies – that you did the due diligence to ensure you were purchasing the most cost-effective options for the purpose.

Saying “I know I bought building supplies” is pretty much never good enough for government work.

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I’m an auditor. Suspicious is the baseline for my profession. Unaccounted for, and undocumented, means unsupported spending. If you can’t back up where that money went, you don’t get to keep it.

Theoretically unsupported is not good enough for our government contractors, state entities, etc. In my experience, federally they let it slide more. States are way more driven to make sure every penny is spent well. But then again, states don’t have lobbyists for their entities that can shift thresholds, and change political climates.

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Any organization, either business or government, that never has to worry about where its next dollar is coming from will eventually lose its ability to track where its dollars are going.

Finance and budget offices are bureaucracies. When you never have cause to adhere to a tight budget, people will skip the process so that they can get the work done quickly without bureaucracy. Eventually the assumption that the bureaucracy exists only to slow down work becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You end up with multiple, conflicting processes to spend money which are impossible to audit or otherwise track with a computer. This process was pioneered by business and perfected by government.

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