The fraud total is up to $230 billion
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
An announcement by Vance – just the tip of the fraud iceberg?:
“Just since the beginning of the Fraud Task Force that I started under the president’s leadership and direction, we have identified $230 billion of fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American people, and we have halted already $56 billion of that,” Vance told the gathered Cabinet, according to multiple accounts of the meeting.
President Trump, who presided over the meeting, wasted no time tying the findings to his predecessor’s administration, telling those in attendance that the level of corruption and fraud uncovered [from] the Biden years was unprecedented.
Once the payments go out, though, for the most part the money can’t be clawed back. An ounce of prevention is worth a tremendous amount.
More:
The scope of the $230 billion figure is broad, encompassing improper payments, systemic waste, and alleged criminal fraud spanning multiple federal agencies. According to reporting on the matter, the total includes tens of billions of dollars tied to fraudulent or delinquent pandemic-era small business loans, improper Medicaid and Medicare billing claims, unauthorized government contracts, and improper disbursements across state-administered welfare programs.
Of course – and especially if the money is gone for good – prosecutions must follow, as well as convictions, or this will continue. It will most certainly continue anyway if Democrats come to power.
It’s not as though we didn’t already know that government programs invite fraud. But the scope of it is absolutely massive, and we probably are uncovering only a small amount of it. Quite the swamp worthy of drainage.
[NOTE: Here’s an article appearing in the NY Post that focuses on the adult day care industry in New York’s Asian community. It is alleged to be rife with fraud. From the piece:
An investigation by The Post found seniors in a typical scheme get $500-$1000 a month in daycare kickbacks while the facility pockets upwards of $3,000 a month per patient.
According to city and federal data, Flushing’s SADCs billed a total of $733M from 2018-2024, the latest year for which spending figures are available.
From Dr. Mehmet Oz:
“Due to a lack of proper state oversight, these centers have become cash cows for criminal syndicates, who use kickbacks and other illegal practices to steal millions from Medicaid. When Flushing, Queens, alone accounts for roughly 14% of all social adult daycare spending in New York state, it’s pretty obvious that these centers aren’t popping up solely to fulfill a legitimate need in the community,” he told The Post.
There’s much much more at the link.]
Make all these social welfare programs State funded. Get the Federal government out of the welfare business. I’ll pay for my State’s fraud, but not yours.
Not necessarily in this order, and probably cyclical in practice.
Step one: What Paul said.
(Caveat: there are legitimate needs where sharing through Federal facilitation is possibly appropriate; however, FEMA screwed that up so bad it enters the suspect territory of income redistribution rather than disaster assistance – see Step two).
Step two: Suspend any government program where the fraud and waste exceed a set percentage (more than 25%?); END any program where the excess is over 50%; review the rest and suspend any where the ratio of overhead going to the administrators exceeds the amount going to intended beneficiaries by so much as a dime.
Step three: Every agency employee, especially administrators, who should have been catching the fraud and waste, and did not, go to jail. No exceptions. Ditto elected officials.
Same as embezzling from a bank IMO.
Step four: Every plea by a politician or NGO for more money to solve the problems they have been “working on” for the last fifty years or more gets a firm NO.
Step five: And repeal the Federal income tax.
Once a bank account is stuffed, it is easily raided.
Step six: As for Social Security and Medicare, I’m still thinking about that one.
However, there have to be reforms, and an end to this danged “third rail” mindset.
We elect legislators and presidents to solve problems, not salve their egos.
Step seven: Impeach and remove any legislators profiting from insider trading, in all its slimy disguises, or cheating on their own income taxes. Period.
In other words: Make the government treat the money as if it actually WERE their own funds, to be wisely managed, instead of Magic Beans that Fall From the Sky. The mix of carrots and sticks is not difficult to discern; only the will to implement AND ENFORCE them is missing.
(Maybe we should add Step eight: Elected officials have to post a substantial bond that is forfeited if they are complicit in any kind of fraud, or if they enact deliberately-designed fraud-attractors, or if they break the “rules” they pretend to make for themselves, especially if codified as laws.)
Thinking since beginning of summer if all this fraud somehow didn’t happen might we be not so far in debt?
Yet bet most fraud while looted is largely wasted by the thieves
When the states administer federally financed programs, the states have zero incentive to manage the programs efficiently; it’s not their money.
Further, the magnitude of the spending – billions of $$$ – literally makes it impossible to monitor where the money is going. This would be true even if the states were acting in a fiduciary responsible manner (which they are not; it’s not their money).
The only solution -for starters – is for the states to self-finance any and all programs and get the federal govt out of the “hand-outs” business.
At least in this way, any money wasted will be state money, not federal money.
Nothing is going to change ,no one will be punished. Bring on the collapse.
The question is whether there would be any debt at all were it not for the fraud.
@Mary Catelli:The question is whether there would be any debt at all were it not for the fraud.
It’s tempting to blame fraud for everything, because then the hard work of holding our Senators and Congressmen accountable would not have to be done. Just catch the fraudsters and let things go on as they have.
But the national debt is on the ever-upward trajectory it has been on for the last fifty years. The Federal deficit this year is $2 trillion. This year alone. It was $1.8 trillion last year, and $1.8 trillion the year before, and it will be more than that next year, if all the spending is not reined in.
$2 trillion year after year after year is a lot more than $230 billion in fraud spread out over time.
Fraud should not be tolerated, but the massive overspending has to be reined in or eliminating fraud entirely will be but a short breather. That’s how exponential growth works. The only way to rein it in is to hold our Senators and Congressmen accountable. Both parties are culpable in it, using the continuing resolution process to avoid having to do anything but insert more pork.
And we the voters are culpable in it by not throwing the bums out.
I agree with Niketas Choniates — we’re talking GOVERNMENT here — FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
Personally, I don’t believe our federal government is ever going to cut spending. Is it too big to fail?
Every journey (every reform) starts with a single step.
How do you run a marathon?
One step at a time.
A cynic can always find a reason to stop or never start.
@ NC (and Karmi): “$2 trillion year after year after year is a lot more than $230 billion in fraud spread out over time.”
When reading about the debt/deficit, so many numbers get thrown around it is sometimes hard to keep things straight. This nearly 10:1 example becomes a prose based slap in the face to pay attention.
The only way to end the fraud is to dismantle the welfare state entirely. Including Social Security and Medicare.
It’s all unconstitutional anyway. Just ask James Madison.
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” -James Madison, 1794.
Depends on what you figure is “fraud”. For example, is there any illegal expenditure in California’s high speed rail program? You’d have to say that a “program” which cost tens of millions was undertaken while knowing it was irrelevant and only a matter of paying a bunch of money to the Connected. And over and over. Be a tough case to make, given how many issues could be said to be important.
And there’s Solyndra. Total fail. Was it undertaken knowing it would fail and the government eat the loss while the bigs kept their paychecks? Or was it sold as a legitimate (giggle) green project to save the planet?
Is fees for NGO as money for the Really Good Thing passes through “fraud”?
Or is it selling your vote for promises of free stuff–you get it for free and are not taxed–what causes deficits?
Referencing Dave L.’scomment RE: James Madison (above), were the federal government to be forcibly herded back into its Constitutional corral, the most offensive amendments (16, 17) repealed, or modified (14, 19) to comply with common sense *, and perhaps a couple added (Aesop Fan’s Steps Three and Eight, above) it would go a long way toward fiscal sanity. But, there’s no substitute for Citizen Involvement to keep the Electeds honest (which we have now, just in the other direction, i.e., “gimme some.”)
Mediscare, Medicaid and Social Insecurity are somewhat special cases, but rectifiable – albeit, not without some amount of pain, but the pain of a total collapse would be significantly greater. If money is to be handed out freely, let it be State Money, not federal, which would at least allow Fleeing From Insanity, not now achievable when it’s federal.
Certainly, state taxes would increase, probably some states would be a wash – whatever dollars one would not send to the feds to waste would be sent to the state capital instead, but citizen mobility would provide some degree of correction.
I’m afraid Keith (above), has the gist of it; despite the earnest efforts of Trump & Co., it’s still a lot of talk, talk and none of jail, jail, and whatever reigning in occurs we’re only one Democrat away from resuming the largess, probably with a substantial increase.
* 14 to specify, and remind, that it was to ensure freed slaves were full citizens, not the latest fresh brith by an illegal immigrant, and 19 needs the addition of some sort of citizen responsibility for all, i.e., “a stake in the game” – mere pulse and respiration is totally inadequate for those charged with controlling the direction of the country.