Todd Harrison

You know, you guys have talked about the time to replenish.

I know, um, Todd Harrison over at AEI, who we all have known for a long time, has done detailed analysis of the defense budget for years and years.

His budget tool online, which I encourage listeners to go check out because it's pretty amazing that Todd is probably going to put a lot of consultants out of business by making this free to the world.

But he was saying it's three years minimum usually, 36 months if you're lucky.

that's more than the entire US economy though not more than the US's current debt if that makes you feel any better while this might not be surprising for a government agency that has never once in its existence passed an audit it begs the question where has all the money gone and how has it been adjusted well in a financial tactic that has never ever led to trouble in the past The Pentagon seems to be adjusting by counting the same money again and again as they move it between accounts.

Todd Harrison, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the adjustments are simply a lot of double, triple, and quadruple counting of the same money as it gets moved between accounts.

And by a lot, they mean like over 500,000 adjustments in 2018.

According to the government's own data, In today's version of things the government regularly does that the IRS would put you in jail for, no wonder the Pentagon fails every audit and doesn't even seem to care about it.

Curtis, can you at least tell us what your third article is going to be and when we will find it for a show?

It was a gentleman with AEAI, Todd Harrison, wrote an article that we can buy more weapons, but we can't buy more time.

And it just talked about how long it takes in the acquisition cycle.

Congressional resolutions do not help.

One naval official said that, quote, "...the money for the payroll was robbed to pay for overseas contingencies and is being backfilled by money that hasn't been spent.

They are backfilling payroll so we get enough money in our paycheck." They're not just speaking about it, according to Todd Harrison, who's a defense analyst at the Conservative American Enterprise Institute, quote, and I suspect this is a deliberate decision of the civilian leaders in the Pentagon, starting at the secretary, that this is for political reasons, that they don't want to look like they're damaging future military readiness over a war that's becoming an increasing political liability, end quote.

What they're saying

here