WASHINGTON—When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) convenes Wednesday’s House subcommittee hearing on improper payments by federal agencies, the panel will take aim at a target-rich environment.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the congressional investigative agency, has for decades been calling attention to the reality that every year, hundreds of billions of tax dollars go to dead people, incorrect names or addresses, perpetrators of fraud, mistaken contractors, fictitious business fronts, and a host of other recipients who shouldn’t be getting the checks.
In its most recent report to Congress on the problem, the GAO pointed to the fact that federal officials cannot “determine the full extent to which improper payments, including fraud, occur and reasonably assure that appropriate actions are taken to reduce them.”
Even so, GAO investigators have found enough evidence on which to base their estimate of the scope of the improper payments problem at $233 billion to $521 billion for the period from 2018 to 2022.
That’s an average of $130.6 billion annually that could have been spent on worthy causes. To cite just one example, there are 35,574 homeless veterans in the United States, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Each of those homeless veterans could receive a yearly check in the amount of $3.7 million. […]
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