Comptroller General: U.S. Made $144 Billion in Improper Payments in 2016

Cybercast News Service ^ | May 18, 2017 | 10:05 AM EDT | Susan Jones

[Olog-hai]

Improper payments by the federal government are costing taxpayers billions of dollars a year — more than a trillion, if you add them up over the years, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro told the Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday.

“These are payments that should not have been made or were made in the wrong amounts,” Dodaro said in his opening statement. The problem is growing, he said, from $125 billion in 2014; to $137 billion in 2015; to the most recent estimate of $144 billion in 2016. “This includes estimates for 112 programs at 22 federal agencies, so it is a pervasive problem,” he added.

Since 2003 — when Congress required many executive departments and agencies to estimate the amount of improper payments annually — the cumulative total is estimated to be “in excess of $1.2 trillion,” Dodaro said. “So it’s a significant amount of money.” Dodaro said three big federal programs — Medicare, Medicaid and the Earned Income Tax Credit — account for most (75 percent) of the improper payments. “But there are a number of programs across government where this problem is an issue,” he said.

And the problem is worse than the numbers indicate, because 18 “risk-susceptible” programs — including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families — do not report estimates at all. SNAP (food stamps) stopped reporting in 2015. And the $144 billion in 2016 does not include estimates from the Defense Department, which could be a sizeable number, Dodaro said. …

[ClearCase_guy]

To the Clinton Foundation?

[DoughtyOne]

FReepers, it's time to get serious about retiring this FReep-a-thon.


Free Republic, the Home of the Eternal FReeper, Conservatism's Finest  (timely thoughts on the FReeper dynamic and Free Republic)

Ramirez political cartoon: Try it! Single Payer... LARGE VERSION 05/08/2017: LINK  LINK to regular sized versions of his political cartoons (archive).

Please join the monthlies, an automated way to help support Free Republic.

If you are not opting to join the automated monthly support program, please consider joining the One One Done project.  LINK

FReepers, 53.56% of the Second Quarter FReep-a-thon goal has been met.  Click above and pencil in your donation now.  Please folks, lets end this FReepathon.  Thank you!
...this is a general all-purpose message, and should not be seen as targeting any individual I am responding to...

[ptsal]

The loose change should cover the 44th library in Chicago and a trip to Tahiti.....

In fact, there is enough slop in this figure to field an army.

[Dilbert San Diego]

How does the federal government manage its money?

Do they use any form of business principles in approving payment? For example, are there purchase orders, the need for department managers to sign off on expenditures, the need for senior management to approve big dollar contracts?

In the case of Medicare and Medicaid, do we ask for documentation of the medical services rendered, before payment is made? Are healthcare providers ever audited to ensure all payments were made properly?

For that matter, are other federal contracts audited? Does the federal accounts payable system itself ever get audited, to ensure that payments made for any purpose were done properly???

There is some serious money going out the door, unaccounted for or improperly paid out. This would not happen this way in the business world. Basic business principles would prevent a lot of this from happening.

And, finally, when we do discover improper payments were made, are attempts made to collect the improper payments back???

[Lurkinanloomin]

Money to burn.

Hey, we’ll just borrow more from the Chinese.......

[PeterPrinciple]

Since 2003 — when Congress required many executive departments and agencies to estimate the amount of improper payments annually

---

If you go through all the work of estimating improper payments, you have also identified the problems. Yet no action is taken on this?

I only did what I was told?

[PeterPrinciple]

How does the federal government manage its money?

---

Mostly cash flow management. If there is money, you spend it.

But that is the way most of our society runs. If the auto dealer will lend you the money for the car, you deserve it.

Regarding audits. They are very time/resource consuming. especially large organizations with double entry accounting. You can hide very easily in saying it is an accounting error, sound familiar?? Don’t know what the solution is but maybe using volunteers for audits might be fun.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

$125 billion in 2014
$137 billion in 2015
$144 billion in 2016

Hmmm...what is the common thread among those years? The guy who never ran a lemonade stand and who worked company for a short time and called his experience “behind enemy lines.”

[Thibodeaux]

“a hundred billion here, and a hundred billion there, and pretty soon you’ve stolen real money” Senator Everett Dirkson

[Cobra64]

And Congress balks at 20 billion to fund Trump's national security/drug prevention wall.

[TLI]

$144 Billion in Improper Payments in 2016

144 billion eh?

Last year alone.

That's about 5.5 southern border walls that we just can't seem to find the money for... .

[Don Corleone]

This waste plus the Pentagon fuel slush fund is enough to build the wall around..... Mexico.

[wiggen]

to all your questions except the last one, no. to the last one i LOL.

[thinden]

Or 144 billion is about the same amount obammy shipped out in pallet loads of unmarked bills to lran..

On a positive note the 144 billion flushed down the drain makes the 6 billion missing from the hildabeast state department look like chump change.

[WayneLusvardi]

It is deception to report improper payments by state in percentages. This deceives the reader to conclude that Red states are the problem. When put in actual dollars it is Blue states where most of the improper spending occurs.

“The federal government spends some $367.8 billion a year on California. That’s an average of about $9,500 for every woman, man and child in the state”.

Source: There’s a $368-billion reason why California depends on the federal government
LA TIMES FEB. 7, 2017

[Liz]

Comptroller Dodaro said Medicare, Medicaid (and the Earned Income Tax Credit) account for 75 percent of the trillion in improper payments.

REFERENCE---A Medicaid Fraud Ring In Brooklyn by Russian constituents of Sen Charles Scuhumer (Dem-NY)
By Julia Ioffe, NY Magazine, published March 2, 2012

In March 2012, thirty-six Russians---Soviet immigrants----were arrested in Brooklyn, New York for plotting to bilk US health-insurance companies out of a quarter of a billion tax dollars.

The plot, according to the NY Times, involved ten doctors, nine clinics, and a hundred and five corporations: “The ring falsified official US govt documennts demanding tax dollars----reimbursements for a mountain of excessive and unnecessary medical treatments that were never done.

The Russian fraudsters were so brazen that they already had in-place three separate billing-processing companies just to handle the paperwork.....to get the tax dollars into their greedy hands faster.

SOURCE: MEDICAID FRAUD IN BRIGHTON BEACH, BROOKLYN

https://www.bing.com/search?q=russian%20medicaid%20fraud%20in%20Brighton%20beach&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&pq=russian%20medicaid%20fraud%20in%20brighton%20beach&sc=0-39&sk=&cvid=32789ED4D3D84A92BD6C37981C7C292F

=====================================================

NOTES---What’s remarkable here is just how unremarkable the story is, coming, as it does, out of Sen Schumer's district-----the Russia-centric Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, is famous for its Russian delicacies, entertainment, a population of highly-inflected Russian dialects, but mostly for its concentration of insurance fraud.

The NY Times reports, “Brighton Beach has one of the highest rates of health care fraud in the nation, according to federal statistics.

An analysis from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (agency regulates those two programs), shows that more health care providers in the Brighton Beach ZIP code are currently barred from the programs for malfeasance than in almost any other ZIP code in the United States.

===========================================

SENATOR SCHUMER IS PUSHING THE TRUMP/RUSSIAN COLLUSION

Prior to his taking the US Senate seat, Sen Schumer represented:

<><> the Ninth Congressional District in Brooklyn and Queens for eighteen years.

<><> earlier Schumer represented the Forty-Fifth Assembly District in Brooklyn for six years.

=========================================================

SEN SCHUMER MUST HAVE SPRUNG INTO ACTION TO DEFEND TAXPAYERS BEING RIPPED OFF BY HIS RUSSIAN CONSTITUENTS. RIGHT?

[siunevada]

“Dodaro said the Department of Health and Human Services believes it lacks the statutory authority to ask the states for information to estimate improper payments.”

That’s very weird.

I know California counties used to report overpayments in all the welfare programs to the State, categorized as administrative error and client caused. And the State would never have cared unless they had to report to the Feds.

Maybe the last administration ‘eased the administrative burden’ of any sort of quality control on welfare programs. (Euphemism for open up the floodgates.)

[txrefugee]

How many department heads have gone to prison for misappropriating/stealing taxpayer money? We all know the answer to that.

[Pentagon Leatherneck]

So $17 Billion is chump change these days. Is it Trump change? 17 Billion ? Really?

TC