WAIT!!
LETS CLEAR UP SOMETHING RIGHT NOW!
It has come to light that those $300 screwdrivers and such are actually a needed distraction for military funds.
It turns out that the military, naturally, works on top secret devices and weapons, which no senator or congressman needs to know about, because most would probably spill the beans anyhow and then the enemy would know. The military cannot put a section in its budget titled ‘one billion expended for the development and perfection of the Mark 6 laser guided, semi-sentient invisible smart bomb’ or ‘two million expended on the perfecting and application of robotic, impervious-to-anything tanks’. So, the spent funds are spread out, disguised as other things.
Of course, I’m NOT saying that there is no corruption in government military contractors, BUT I also know that if – thanks to congress - a government agency does not spend ALL of it’s budget in a given year, that the following year they will find it very hard to get any more. In fact, Congress has made it MANDATORY to use up the budgets before getting more. The government gives out no points for being thrifty.
It was observed by several governmental watchdog groups that this stupid ruling was placed into effect by greedy congressmen who were stealing as much as they could grab from their budgets and being made to look bad by the few HONEST congressmen who were actually smartly using their budgets and coming up with leftover funds or without any deficits.
The military with, say, a one billion dollar budget, for a year might discover that they have a few million left over towards the end and have to ‘dispose’ of this as quickly as possible or not only loose it, but find that their next years appropriations will be cut.
This line of governmental thought goes right in hand with the ‘double booking’ of the national budget and debt, which often displayed two prices for items and made it appear that we were paying much, much more for things than we actually were. How do you think Clinton managed not only to wipe out the national debt overnight but showed a several billion dollar surplus? He threw out one of the ‘books’.
Example:The government wants a warehouse. A contractor prices it at one million and starts building it. Something happens and the contractor cannot finish the job. The government bids it out. A new contractor bids on the job, but not just to FINISH it, but gives an estimate for having to build the whole thing. THAT goes into a second book. (Now, the warehouse is priced at TWO million.) The contractor does the job and uses up $500,000, which is what the original contractor left behind. The price is still well within the original one million. BUT, upon completion, it goes into the second book as being $500,000 over budget. So now, according to the records, the one million dollar warehouse cost two and a half million dollars.
Get the picture? It is in Citizens Against Government Waste. I have NO idea who could have come up with such a bizarre way of record keeping or why.
Mark
“Think of it as Evolution in action.”