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No they don't. It's only state-hating propaganda rags such as the Washington Times that make such foolish claims. People have been getting elected for decades on pledges of wiping out federal waste, fraud, and abuse. And they've been rather successful at it. You can't find much more than peanuts these days. Which is why Obama's pledge to go through the budget line by line came up with -- peanuts.
As for auditors and AG's, their job is to identify areas where there is potential for improvement. They are ALWAYS going to find some. They would have had quite a long list to hand to Jesus of Nazareth for instance concerning missed opportunities and the extent of blatant alms-wasting inherent in his poorly coordinated ministries.
improper payments is the focus currently - meaning payments made are either erroneous (not accurate) or irregular (fishy) -- High error rate Federal programs include: Crop insurance, Medicare/Medicaid & SSI
categorizing these as 'peanuts' is, to me, not in line with reality -- well, not my reality at least
"In fiscal year (FY) 2015, federal agencies reported a government-wide improper payment rate of 4.39%, a decrease from the high-water mark of 5.42% reported in FY 2009. Improper payments totaled approximately $137 billion in FY 2015."
An improper payment can happen for a number of reasons. Knowing the causes of program error is essential. By understanding the causes of improper payments, agencies can better implement policies and procedures to reduce errors without negatively impacting the people who should be receiving payments from the government.
Prior to FY 2015 reporting, agencies were required to categorize their improper payment estimates into three categories:
(1) documentation and administrative errors;
(2) authentication and medical necessity errors; and
(3) verification errors.
However, those categories proved to be limited value in determining the root causes of improper payments in most programs. Therefore, OMB—in consultation with agencies—developed new improper payment categories that expanded on the existing categories and created a more meaningful and useful way to break out root cases for each agency.
These new categories
(1) prove more pertinent to the vast array of programs across the Federal landscape;
(2) help agencies better present the different categories of improper payments in their programs and the percentage of the total improper payment estimate that each category represents; and
(3) provide more granularity on improper payment estimates—leading to more effective corrective actions at the program level and more focused strategies for reducing improper payments at the government-wide level.
categorizing these as 'peanuts' is, to me, not in line with reality -- well, not my reality at least
All large scale programs -- public or private -- will need to monitor for improper payments. Note that the amounts involved do not represent waste, fraud, or abuse. Nor do they represent losses to the government. They represent payments made in an amount that was either higher or lower than what a subsequent review determined would have been the proper amounts. There is no other story to tell here.
Go hunt in the private sector. Such game still abounds there.
Similarity is not identity. Similarity in the private sector is of course dealt with through countless hours and untold millions of dollars worth of court-clogging tort claims for such things as patent infringement and violation of nondisclosure agreements. All of it of course paid for by taxpayers in their roles as private sector consumers. So thoroughly and frivolously self-serving.
And still no actual spending cuts to propose here? Just more of the usual talk-and-gawk?
If any legal action is valid its intellectual property, this is why the Russians and chineese are very slowly pulling ahead ... because we don't care about intellectual property any more. Why would I want to bring something to market in the USA if someone can just copy it and I then have to fight an uphill battle to get them to cease and desist and collect any monitary damages from their theft?
Where are the line items for waste, fraud, and mismanagement?
Where are the line items for duplication & triplication of mission? Mission creep? Conflicting rules & regulations?
SS is intellectually dishonest to have on the list because it is paid into separate from taxes and is only suppose to be distributed to those who paid in or their survivors. It is not part of taxes even though politicians steal from it.
Having an over bloated military with the pensions and medical to go with it needs to go. If you are not a maintainer or builder (who are mostly contractors) of high tech military equipment or part of some special operations unit you simply don't need to be there. The military has turned into a bloated bearocracy with people rising to their highest level of incompetence and then these are the people that set the rules.
Once you have too many people in any organization like the military it becomes far to difficult to change and adapt. The army should barely exist (outside of the most elite ranger units or maintainers).
We cant let our hardware go to pot but we certainly don't need whipping boys on the pay roll so that an equally useless officer has someone to boss around so he can feel important.
In peace time all we need is skilled people maintaining equipment, we don't need the screaming and yelling and drama simulation. Keep a few drill sgt types around in case a war breaks out then draft people. I have always heard the argument that we have a "professional" military and that its better to have 1.5 million man army ready to go ... well I did not see hardly any professionalism when I was in and certainly don't see it at the panda express near base where I am. I did see made for TV drama and I am not alone in that assertion.
We need to drain the military swamp as well. Keep the cool equipment and tech savy people that use it and maintain it and purge the rest.
Medicaid needs to go as well as ACA and maybe even create a govt mandate to abolish medical insurance and medical debt that would put EXTREME market pressure on medical rates because they would have to go down to what people could pay as the hospitals could not collect on any debts nor could people offset over pricing with insurance. If you set legal precedence's where creditors cant collect on debt then they will stop issuing it and prices will come WAY down to what people can actually pay.
Military R&D is critically important to keep.
Last edited by pittsflyer; 11-08-2016 at 12:28 PM..
All large scale programs -- public or private -- will need to monitor for improper payments. Note that the amounts involved do not represent waste, fraud, or abuse. Nor do they represent losses to the government. They represent payments made in an amount that was either higher or lower than what a subsequent review determined would have been the proper amounts. There is no other story to tell here.
Pick up a copy of "Bailout" by Neil Barofsky. It is a first-person account of the Special Inspector General for TARP.
In Bailout, Brofsky, who was in a position to know the facts, documents his own 19-month tenure trying to clean up some of the messes created by the much too cozy relationships between Wall Street and government. More importantly he recounts evidence that the government is so big that its a bureaucracy within a bureaucracy within more bureaucracies that can't do anything but grow and spend more money. The only real cure would be to take meat clever to the bureaucracy and cut it down to a size that might actually be able to serve the citizens of America.
Barofsky was actually SIGTARP for 27 months, and while presented as your own work, the post above was actually copied verbatim from a 2012 Amazon customer review of the book. Bad form there.
Barofsky was actually SIGTARP for 27 months, and while presented as your own work, the post above was actually copied verbatim from a 2012 Amazon customer review of the book. Bad form there.
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