Deacon923
Scooter Banks
Could we do better? Probably. All programs should undergo intense scrutiny when taxpayer money is on the line. Then again the Pentagon operates 234 golf courses around the world. Or you could refer to this list I compiled in 15 minutes of research:
$60BN in contractor fraud/waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.
$70BN in waste in weapon system procurement.
Air conditioning alone cost $12BN a year in Iraq/Afghanistan.
The DoD spends $500 MM annually on marching bands.
The Pentagon-to-Lockheed pipeline drives up the prices of weapons and prevents effective oversight of weapon manufacturing companies — all of which ends up costing taxpayers billions each year.
Weird though, that in a thread about our relationships with the Middle East and Muslims, we're talking about welfare abuse and respectability politics. Almost like it's intentional distraction...
Could we do better?
what's the source for that table? Just curious for some context.
Most of the programs have very low abuse rates. I guarantee you that many large corporations are losing more than 2% to fraud, theft, employee expense account abuse, etc. etc. on an annual basis.
It's interesting to me that the worst performer, both in percentage and actual dollars, is "negative income tax". I'm curious about what that category includes. If it is just the Earned Income Tax Credit, I would think the table would say that. IMO the reason that there are such large problems with negative income tax programs is because (a) they are overly complicated, and thus easy to game; and (b) Congress has steadily crushed the ability of the IRS to enforce the tax laws by refusing to fund it at an appropriate level. It's a weird cycle; the EITC was a conservative idea to use the tax code to pay poor people rather than just giving them cash. Note that the programs that just give out cash have a much lower level of abuse. Then, the same conservatives turn around and make it even easier to game by going on crusades against the IRS and defunding it for the past 25 years or more.