Originally Posted by Dovster
Bart, that was not the case when I was in the military. In fact, there was one situation where wasting public funds was very strong encouraged:
If it was close to the end of the fiscal year and there were still funds left over in a unit's budget it was almost mandatory to spend them. If you did not they would be returned to the Treasury and you would risk having future budgets reduced by an equivalent amount.
In the type of units that you and I both served in, ICF monies were the most at risk. By their very nature they were kept for unforeseen events and generally there was still quite a lot left over at the end of the year. It was interesting to see how creative commanders could become in finding ways to spend them.
Is this still the case in the military today? Is there a similiar situation at the TSA?
Yes, the end-of-year rush still exists; however, not as haphazardly. They must still comply with all the rules and regulations. The way I've seen it done is that commanders identify and prioritize unresourced requirements so that as funds become available, then they may be resourced. They still have to go through all the wickets and permissions as they would with resourced requirements. It's a matter of differentiating between the "gotta have" and "nice to have" but not in terms of luxury; usually in terms of mission priorities (need a new tactical vehicle first before purchasing an upgraded computer LAN).
As for the "other" funds, interesting point. I've seen people fried because they were off by a few bucks on their accounts, yet have also witnessed thousands of dollars spent on something that I couldn't quite comprehend as legit yet was somehow rationalized as such. I also saw it where we had to hang onto receipts and track everything by the penny yet in other instances wads of bills handed out like candy. It's a very strange and goofy world you and I participated in.