Attempting to close your budget gap on the backs of poor people qualifies, I think.
From reading that article, there are still a great number of Republican politicians (elected and running) in OK who are still anti-tax. One of them is floating the idea that the reason the budget isn’t working is because of waste and fraud at the state government level. So his idea is to have investigations instead of raising taxes. It’s… stunning.
A corollary of the voter fraud principle, perhaps? Republicans have a hard imagining a world in which everyone isn’t stealing with both hands since everyone they know is defrauding everyone in sight.
No the “waste and fraud abuse” in spending meme has been around the GOP for much longer than the voter fraud meme. Last time I saw a poll on this Americans said waste was 50 cents on the dollar .
I did find out one thing I didn’t expect when I looked at that poll. I said this was a “GOP meme” but that poll shows that the GOP figure was 55 cents on the dollar while the Dem figure as 47 cents on the dollar wasted. I mean I know a lot of liberals think the military is wasteful but 47 cents on the dollar for the whole federal government? I have to say, that’s a bit of liberal idiocy I didn’t expect.
So what’s the accurate figure?
Depends on how you define “waste, fraud and abuse” of course!
Some on the left would say a lot of the 18 cents on a dollar the feds spend on the military is waste. Some on the right would say a lot of the 4 cents a dollar the feds spend on welfare & related programs (mostly food stamps) is waste. Etc.
In terms of measured waste, fraud and abuse, food stamp fraud is about 1 cent on the dollar according to the USDA
According to the Center for Public Integrity, Medicare fraud is around $60 billion per year. According to Center for Medicare Services Medicare spending in 2016 was $672 Billion. Adding in Medicare Advantage (which is including in the $60 Billion fraud figure) that is probably about $60 Billion fraud out of around $700 Billion spent, or roughly 8%.
My experience as a workers’ comp defense attorney tells me that medical billing is very fraud prone so I would estimate that 8% Medicare figure at the upper end.
So, my estimate is that total government spending on “waste fraud and abuse” is in the ballpark of 1% on the low end to 8% on the high end. Call it 4-5% as a likely estimate.
In a $4 Trillion budget 4-5% is a lot of money but if you look at Medicare fraud for example, we are already fighting it pretty hard. The problem with many things is that when there is the opportunity for fraud, there’s always going to be fraud and large bureaucratic programs that pay out big bucks are always going to have some fraud leakage.
To get a sense of the comparison from public to private, the estimate I’ve heard from underwriters is that 10% of liability insurance losses are caused by fraud. In my CA workers’ comp practice I would estimate it in the 5% range, but a few years ago when I was working in LA, which is inundated with workers’ comp fraud, I’d say something 30% to 50% of the losses were fraud related. (That does include the insurance company paying people like me to fight the fraud; we don’t work for free. If the fraud wasn’t fought, the losses would have been much higher.)
So there’s always fraud, not just in government but in private spending as well. The issue is keeping it to a small percentage.
It’s because literally all the can conceive is that government = bad, and they’re baffled and stymied when the world doesn’t work that way.
But as noted, that’s a secondary result of knowing they themselves are evil and greedy. So they assume everyone is evil and greedy. Also that ludicrous reverse spin thing Trump does when he’s guilty of something and preemptively blames his opponents for his own crime.
Ah, yes, true as well.
I think that’s it - they project that anyone in power will misuse funds or steal it, because that’s what they’d do. And they cannot conceive that someone could do something different. Trump is a perfect example of that - every single thing he’s done since getting elected is a direct copy of the extensive criticism he leveled at Obama through his tweets.
Hehe, Colbert made that joke last night too. :-)
Yeah, like taking the whole Presidential retinue to HIS resort most every weekend since he got inaugurated, and of course charging the taxpayer (and unless I miss my guess, not at cost) for every room/meal/bottled water etc. that they necessarily have to use while doing their jobs. It’s shameless self-dealing.
Correction, it’s what they actually do:
Benghazi!
IRS
Gerrymandering
Voter ID/Voter Fraud
Mexicans!
Muslims/Terrorists!
LOL. You don’t say.
Oklahoma teachers have had it with the govt. strangulation
Hope they succeed with more than a pathetic 5% pay raise. In states like Oklahoma and West Virginia they deserve more like 100%.
HEY GUYS can you all stop bringing up privacy data leaks you are making our legislation look bad
“This resolution would essentially turn your web browsing history, in all of its naked shame, into a package to be sold and distributed. For example, let’s say Cruz Googled “Campbell’s Chunky Soup” 43 times over the weekend. Under the resolution he supported, his ISP would be able to sell that data in the corporate world without notifying him.”
https://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/cruz-cornyn-co-sponsored-bill-allows-web-browsing-history-sold-without-consent/