“Oops! Sorry, we misplaced $25 billion of your dollars.”
So says the federal government. (Well, except for the “sorry” part.)
As federal budget expert Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation reports:
“[T]he federal government cannot account for $25 billion it spent in 2003. That’s billion with a “b.” Federal auditors know that $25 billion was spent by someone, somewhere, on something, but don’t know who spent it, where it was spent or on what it was spent. ***That amount is more than the total federal taxes paid by all of the residents in each of 28 states.*** It’s enough to fund the entire Department of Justice budget.”
Riedl also notes that mention of the loss is “buried in the Department of the Treasury’s 2003 Financial Report of the United States Government [in] a short section titled “Unreconciled Transactions Affecting the Change in Net Position.”
(Sources: Heritage Foundation commentaries:
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed052005b.cfm
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/bg1840.cfm#_ftn2 )
