This problem will only get worse as Leviathan grows under Barack Obama. The Washington Post gives numbers to what we all assumed to be the case; The government just gives away our hard-earned dollars: The federal government's improper payments totaled about $125 billion in fiscal 2010 as unemployment insurance and Medicaid payments increased, officials said Tuesday. But agencies also recovered about $687 million mistakenly paid to delinquent government contractors and beneficiaries.
The government's total improper payment amount climbed $15 billion from the previous year, according to statistics from the Office of Management and Budget. The payments included about 89,000 checks for $250 each sent to dead or incarcerated people as part of the economic stimulus program.
"This is an unfortunate result of the recession and of basic math: the more that is paid out, the more paid out in error even if the overall rate declines," OMB Deputy Director Jeffrey Zients wrote Tuesday on his blog.
Hopefully the House, now in GOP hands, will investigate, report, and monitor how our money is spent better than it has in the past.
Darrell Issa, from his new post as Chairman of the House oversight and Government Reform Committee, will have his hands full in the next two years but I hope he focuses like a laser beam on government spending (not just waste and fraud but also favors dispensed to Democratic and Republicans under their "Friends and Family" style of patronage).
One area to focus on would be the 1014% boost in the Department of Energy's budget for renewable energy - a sector of the economy that would barely exist but for Democrats showering tax dollars on beneficiaries (who are usually Democratic donors-including George Soros and the jolly green giant Al Gore).
How much money has been wasted? Well, the Inspector General of the Department of Energy has problems with how stimulus money was spent by the Obama team. Among the cases of fraud: $200 million dollars of stimulus weatherization money that went for shoddy work and "paid for" widespread fraud-and this was just in Obama's Chicago.
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