Congress exempts U.S. territories from overseas cost reporting despite their overseas location
Evidence
At Congress’s direction, the Overseas Cost Summary omits the costs of bases in the oft-forgotten parts of the United States lacking full democratic representation—places such as Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. This is strange because these areas are, of course, literally overseas, and because the Pentagon considers them “overseas” for accounting and other purposes. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 613
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Well-documented pattern of U.S. territories lacking full democratic representation; ties to colonial/periphery dynamics discussed earlier in the book.
Related
- The cost report excludes bases in U.S. territories lacking full voting representation. (similarity 0.94)
- Pentagon overseas cost reports omit countries with major bases and understate others. (similarity 0.83)
- The Pentagon’s cost report omits a dozen known base-hosting countries (similarity 0.83)
- U.S. territories are retained mainly to host military bases (similarity 0.81)
- The Pentagon legally must report total overseas base spending each year (similarity 0.81)
- Official overseas military cost reports omit hundreds of millions in allied spending (similarity 0.80)
- The Overseas Cost Summary omits entire categories of overseas spending (similarity 0.80)