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CDN Aviator said:... The unfortunate reality in alot of these cases is that if we dont spend the money this year, we wont get it next year ...
Actually, it doesn’t work that way.
“Next year’s” budget was sent to parliament 18 months ago. The budget is ”grossed up” at each level – it is very, very had to figure out who spent too much or too little.
But, March madness procurement does occur – because enough people believe, incorrectly, that spending 100% of the budget matters. I was in the room, in NDHQ, (back circa 1985) when one leader - a Navy two star – put a stop to it by the simple expedient of telling four one stars and me that our PERs depended, in some respect, on being good, sound managers of the taxpayers’ money. Each quarter, on the admiral’s behalf, I coordinated a spending projection review between four staff divisions and arranged for “transfers” between them so that we spent as much money as we productively and responsibly could in that year. What could not be spent well was, at the end of the third quarter of the FY, offered to other parts of the HQ and to the field force. What could still not be spent was “turned in” which meant that, after the fact, the good folks in the Comptroller’s branch used our surpluses to offset overspending in other parts of the CF.
But old myths die hard.