Don't single out the pentagon, the whole government acts this way

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-congress-fights-ov...

This seems like it's the usual "use it or lose it" budget spending pattern that happens on the last day of the fiscal year. This is more obvious when looking at the sidebar graphic: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-annual-agency-bat...

A lot of it is paperwork and bureaucracy making a false perception. Purchasers make requests to procurement all summer. Procurement backs up, then pulls massive OT in the last few days to get it out the door.

Part of it is also "parking" in contracts. What's shown as "spending" isn't just stocking up on unneeded widgets for the sake of spending, but committing to contracts that will use it over the next couple years.

Government awards new contracts at the start of the new fiscal year. News at 11.

What happens, and this is true of any organization where your budget is set and allocated by somebody else, is that you have to show that your organization actually needs the budget it was allocated last year by spending or at least committing it all. It sends a signal that this year, when you say you need $x you actually need $x. Coming in under budget in this case, say $x-$k means that a signal is sent that you can probably come in under budget again next year and you'll just get $x-$k to start with since they can use $k somewhere else.

If you actually came in at $x-$k near the end of the FY? Spend $k on anything and everything in sight to bulk up your numbers because you've probably requested $x+$q for next year and have $0 left at the end is a good signal that you could do more with more.

Also, with the shutdown have an indeterminate end, nobody knows how long it'll be before they can award important contracts so if they can clear those out ahead of time they will.

I seemed to get two nag screens that I couldn't work out how to close so here's a cache without them: http://web.archive.org/web/20131001183734/http://killerapps....

Edit: Blocking Javascript on the website with the No Script add-on should probably work too.

To get around FP paywall, use Firefox -> Web Developer -> Inspect to delete the translucent element over the article, then copy paste into notepad.

Or create a bookmarklet pointing to:

    javascript:$('#globalPaywallWrap,#TB_window,#TB_overlay').css('display','none')

Or just disable javascript.

Regarding the article - it looks like the civilian workforce, who do things like award contracts, clearing their desks before the shutdown.

Not that surprising that lots of spending happens at the end of the quarter, right? There is implied misconduct here but no real evidence that this is a weird pattern.

Well, each department spends the money it gets allocated. The timing looks unfortunate, but I see no reason for making a connection and implying a misconduct.

Why was this story submitted? It's not Hacker News.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yes, some people love to talk politics all day long, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, this isn't the proper forum.

The only reason I could think that it should go on HN is to demonstrate one of the worst user interfaces I have come across.

What is with all the boxes and shading that I can't get rid of on a regular computer? Mind blowingly bad.

Amazingly, some HN readers engage in B2G businesses and find the shutdown unbelievably relevant.

I don't know why this was downvoted.

Any post asking "Why is this on HN?" is going to be automatically down-voted by those who believe that the parent commenter should have pressed the 'flag' button instead of commenting.

I usually only flag spam. I also posted the guidelines, so people reading the thread could read them. We are getting a lot of political threads these days, and I'm not sure new people understand that political posts aren't good.