Honest mistakes to be sure: Audit of federal spending can’t account for at least $619 billion

**Written by Doug Powers

Somewhere there are probably people getting very, very rich thanks to “accounting errors” like these:

A government website intended to make federal spending more transparent was missing at least $619 billion from 302 federal programs, a government audit has found.
And the data that does exist is wildly inaccurate, according to the Government Accountability Office, which looked at 2012 spending data. Only 2% to 7% of spending data on USASpending.gov is “fully consistent with agencies’ records,” according to the report.
[…]
For more than 22% of federal awards, the spending website literally doesn’t know where the money went. The “place of performance” of federal contracts was most likely to be wrong.

The Department of Health & Human Services “failed to report nearly $544 billion” in 2012, which of course justified giving Kathleen Sebelius a hero’s sendoff in April of this year.
According to Newsbusters, only CBS thought this story was important enough to mention:

Instead of covering the missing $619 billion in taxpayer money, Good Morning America showed video of a farmer in Kansas serenading his cows by playing the song “Royals” on his trombone. NBC’s Today spent nearly three minutes discussing the supposed controversy surrounding a new Kim Kardashian mobile app.

Priorities!
On top of it all, earlier this year the State Department said they “lost” $6 billion because they were distracted by all the “smart power” or something.
**Written by Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBe