Hacker News Reader

Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Not sure if you realize, but the federal budget is already public and anybody can FOIA additional details..

So why can’t they pass an audit?

FWIW, you're thinking about the DoD/the Pentagon, not the federal government as whole - and yeah, the Pentagon hasn't been able to pass an audit in ~6 years.

The defense budget is somewhat more opaque, though, for national security reasons. I don't know if they are good reasons or not, but that's the story at least.

I think you're specifically referring to the Pentagon. I'd like to see Elon attempt to force his way into that building next.

Are you kidding? Hegseth will roll out the red carpet.

Why would you trust the man who's been heavily subsidized by the government to do an audit? A significant chunk of Elon Musk's money came from government contracts his companies had with the US government.

Exactly — this isn’t good will. The only subsidies he cares about are his own. Though all involved don’t seem bright enough to realize that destabilizing the government, its finances and the perception of the dollar will have consequences for their own wealth.

They may be all in on various cryptocurrencies at this point.

“Pass” as in “conduct one”? Because that’s a huge massive expensive undertaking that has very little upside and a lot of downside.

It’s hard to pass an audit when unfettered access has been granted to a billionaire without access and cronies installing unauthorized software and strong arming everyone they encounter.

You know they had many years before to pass one…

How does this have anything to do with an erratic billionaire given free rein to illegally sabotage things?

Why do you think the spending of the government isn't already publicly available? Because it is.

The only thing thats public is highly abstracted and euphamistic descriptions of where the money is going. Any FOIAs seeking more granular information would be politely asked to stop asking. After all if this information is classified and relating to national security why would it be handed out?

Not in a practically accessible way for the majority of people.

Is this not practically accessible? https://www.usaspending.gov/

The budgets for all these agencies have congressional oversight. Additionally, there's an entire agency devoted to making sure there's a minimum of grift, the GAO. For example, here's a recent report they did on NASA's large projects:

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106767

> It would be stupendous if voters were aware of where all this to date untraceable money is going.

It would be stupendous if, for example, everyone knew when I receive an interest payment on a savings bond, and for how much? Or some schmuck gets his social security payment?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com