There’s a lot of little tidbits in this but the bottom line is that, at last, someone in the Pentagon budgetary apparatus got their heads out of you-know-where. It cites an amazing $674.4 billion budget and doesn’t delineate the exact amount of savings discovered.
The explanations for these cuts in the appropriations funding tables are typically as vague as the amounts are large. Often the only reason given for what in some cases are cuts nearing a half billion dollars each — and adding up to multiple billions of dollars — is little more than a few words, such as “historical unobligated balances” or “revised estimate.”
Cryptic explanations
One of the biggest movements of money in this year’s final Defense bill came as a result of the Pentagon massively overestimating, for the second fiscal year in a row, how much its new retirement system would cost.
After overstating how much money it would need from Congress for the program in fiscal 2018 by more than a half-billion dollars, the Defense Department again overstated its needs for fiscal 2019 — this time by $732 million, the conferees’ joint explanatory statement said. That was good news, though, in that the money freed up as a result was used to help defray $750 million in higher than expected fuel costs, the report showed.
Check out all of them @ Look At The Billions Lawmakers Found Beneath The Pentagon's Couch Cushions
The explanations for these cuts in the appropriations funding tables are typically as vague as the amounts are large. Often the only reason given for what in some cases are cuts nearing a half billion dollars each — and adding up to multiple billions of dollars — is little more than a few words, such as “historical unobligated balances” or “revised estimate.”
Cryptic explanations
One of the biggest movements of money in this year’s final Defense bill came as a result of the Pentagon massively overestimating, for the second fiscal year in a row, how much its new retirement system would cost.
After overstating how much money it would need from Congress for the program in fiscal 2018 by more than a half-billion dollars, the Defense Department again overstated its needs for fiscal 2019 — this time by $732 million, the conferees’ joint explanatory statement said. That was good news, though, in that the money freed up as a result was used to help defray $750 million in higher than expected fuel costs, the report showed.
Check out all of them @ Look At The Billions Lawmakers Found Beneath The Pentagon's Couch Cushions
