Not Spicy, Absurd, or Satirical

"Sorry, I was too hungry!"

After swallowing the food in his mouth, Councilor Landon picked up a napkin and wiped his hands, dabbing away the grease left on his lips before casually placing it beside him.

"What project? What's it about?"

Lin Qi handed Councilor Landon a cigarette. The two leaned their heads together to light them. As he spoke, Lin Qi exhaled smoke, "The Military Appropriations Committee. The Department of Defense has set up a new budget, a little over thirty million, but the money won't go through the Department of Defense's own accounts. It has to be appropriated by Congress..."

It sounded a little fucked up, didn't it?

Actually, it couldn't have been more normal.

Did the Department of Defense and the military have money?

The answer was yes—and plenty of it. They had so much that they often didn't even know how they could spend it all before the end of the year.

It was only February. The year had just begun, and part of last year's budget had already been approved for this year. More Military Expenditure would be appropriated later.

On top of that, they had just discharged a large number of active-duty personnel, yet the budget seemed to have forgotten about it and was still calculated according to the scale before the major demobilization.

But even if the military and the Department of Defense had so much money that they didn't know how to spend it, they wouldn't use their own funds to pay for orders outside the budget.

Lin Qi's order, for example, hadn't been included in last year's budget. It therefore had to go through a new process. Once the Military Committee decided the money needed to be spent, they would pay Lin Qi.

After all, the military also "had no money."