[lotsofpulp]

US governments at all levels love to use GAAP since it lets them use whatever assumptions they want to make up liability numbers for defined benefit pension and retiree healthcare benefits. In fact, the US itself forced non taxpayer funded employers to use strict standards when calculating defined benefit pension liabilities (PPA 2006), but exempted taxpayer funded pension plans from any rules.

This lets current politicians and current and near future recipients of defined benefit pensions to transfer the costs to future future taxpayers.

[perl4ever]

It is true that governmental accounting standards are different from private sector ones. I believe the GASB promulgates the former; the FASB the latter.

So everybody uses "GAAP" but it's not the same standards nor "whatever assumptions they want". If they used anything else, it would still be "GAAP", too.