...of as billion.sets and liabilities, and its fiscal year 2021 spending budget of $780Pentagon spending accounts for half the entire annual discretionary budget of the U.S. government each year. (That is, spending annually appropriated by Congress, as opposed to mandated spending, which is largely out of Congress's control, such as interest on the federal debt, payment of Social Security benefits, and payment of Medicare benefits, also funded by a special tax.) The fact that this largest agency in the U.S. government cannot and for decades has refused to provide the government with an auditable accounting of its expenditures doesn't seem to count as major news in the U.S. corporate media. Indeed, for most domestic news organizations it isn't news at all.