Tag: waste

$10.3 Billion in Unemployment Insurance Improper Payments

By
Tad DeHaven

The Washington Times noted this week that the 2012 improper payment rate for unemployment insurance benefits was 11.4 percent ($10.3 billion out of $90.2 billion), according to U.S. Department of Labor data. The good news is that the figure is down from 12 percent in 2011. The bad news is that it’s still a pathetic waste of money. 

The waste, fraud, and high administrative costs associated with the program are just some of the reasons why it should be scrapped. A Cato essay on the failures of the unemployment insurance system explains: 

When policymakers dream of ways to provide subsidies and safety nets to groups in society, they rarely take into account the large bureaucratic costs that are inevitably involved. The UI system is a complex and costly system for governments and businesses to administer. 

State governments must raise taxes from almost 8 million businesses, with tax bills specifically calculated for each firm’s experience rating. At the same time, the states dole out individually calculated benefits to millions of workers and monitor whether each person making a claim is currently eligible. Businesses and states need to adjudicate the many disputed claims for benefits, and states need to police UI tax evasion as businesses try to manipulate the system to get a lower tax rate. 

Federal and state UI administration cost taxpayers $5.9 billion in 2010. Despite this large cost, there is widespread concern among experts that the UI system is “in long-term decline” from an administrative perspective. UI computer systems are apparently far outdated in many states, and administrators say that they need more money to do their jobs competently. 

Read the rest of this post »

Topics: 
Tax and Budget Policy

Homeland Security Grants: Subsidizing Dystopia with Your Tax Dollars

By
Gene Healy

My Washington Examiner column this week focuses on an important new study from the office of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK): “Safety at Any Price: Assessing the Impact of Homeland Security Spending in U.S. Cities.”  If you’ve read any of the ample media coverage the report’s received, you may have heard that DHS grants have gone toward 13 sno-cone machines for terror-warriors in Michigan, a latrine on wheels for Fort Worth, Texas, a $100,000 underwater robot for Columbus, Ohio, and a Halloween “zombie apocalypse” demonstration at a swank resort outside San Diego.

But, as I argue in the Examiner,

the media focus on “waste, fraud, and abuse” misses a graver problem with DHS’s decade-long spending spree. Sno-cone machines and “zombie apocalypse” parties aren’t the worst things DHS is underwriting. We ought to worry more about the proliferation of surveillance cameras, mobile biometric scanners, armored personnel carriers and police drones.

The useless projects DHS funds are far less troubling than the ones that can be used to harm Americans’ privacy and liberty—and Coburn’s report is replete with examples of the latter.

Just today the Daily noted another troubling DHS project: “Government officials are quietly installing sophisticated audio surveillance systems on public buses across the country to eavesdrop on passengers…. Linked to video cameras already in wide use, the microphones will offer a formidable new tool for security and law enforcement. With the new systems, experts say, transit officials can effectively send an invisible police officer to transcribe the individual conversations of every passenger riding on a public bus.” The Daily notes, unsurprisingly, “In San Francisco, the Department of Homeland Security is funding the entire cost with a grant.”

It’s a mistake to look at DHS grants simply through the prism of government waste—as if what’s going on here is of a piece with $500 toilet seats and bridges to nowhere.  The costs of this unthinking slide toward a militarized, high-tech Idiocracy can’t be measured in budgetary terms alone.

More highlights from Coburn’s report after the jump:

Coburn also notes the use of DHS funds for police purchases of “Long Range Acoustic Device” crowd-control weapons:

originally developed for use by the military as a nonlethal way to repel adversaries, including Iraqi insurgents or pirates, by making a loud and intense sound that is capable of damaging hearing. Law enforcement agencies have purchased LRAD machines for purposes that include crowd control and issuing message and alerts across vast distances, though its use in terror-related preparedness is questionable.

In 2009, the Pittsburgh police department used its LRAD machine to disperse a crowd that was protesting the G-20 summit….
In 2009, the San Diego County Sheriff stationed its LRAD device at the town-hall meetings of Rep. Darryl Issa (R-CA), Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA), and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), which drew conservative and liberal protestors. The San Diego sheriff’s stated that the LRADs were in place so they “could use the LRAD in place of pepper spray” if there were problem at the event, which there was not.

… Mobile Fingerprinting Devices:

The Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia,
part of the National Capital Region around
Washington, D.C., spent nearly $12 million to upgrade
its automated fingerprinting system called NOVARIS
and purchased mobile devices for use by officers in the
field. Digital fingerprinting had been in place for
Fairfax police since the early 1980’s, but the county
applied for, and won, UASI funds to purchase a new
state-of-the-art system, that would also help it
coordinate with neighboring counties. “Since it was
due for an upgrade, we took the opportunity to use the
UASI grant funds to refresh the system,” explained Alan Hanson with the department.
Hanson explained that the equipment “is used most often in a voluntary capacity” in situations where people are stopped but do not have identification.

…Armored Personnel Carriers:

police departments are arming themselves with military assets often reserved for war zones. One California resident observed as much when officials in Carlsbad—a city with one of the state’s lowest crime rates—expressed interest in using DHS funds to buy a BearCat: “What we’re really talking about here is a tank, and if we’re at the point where every small community needs a tank for protection, we’re in a lot more trouble as a state than I thought.”….

Fargo, a town which “has averaged fewer than 2 homicides per year since 2005” bought a “new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating [gun] turret” using homeland security funds. Fargo Police Lieutenant Ross Renner acknowledges that Fargo “[does not] have every-day threats here when it comes to terrorism.”

…and “Drones: Patrolling the Skies Like Never Before”:

In Texas, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department successfully acquired a $300,000 Vanguard’s ShadowHawk drone fully paid with UASI dollars. Vanguard, located near Montgomery County, approached the sheriff’s department about procuring one of its unmanned systems, according to Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel. In fact, Vanguard helped the Sheriff’s department write “a winning grant proposal that allowed the entire cost of acquisition, training, insurance, and maintenance for a period two years to be absorbed in an Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) grant.”

Do read the whole thing.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, General, Law and Civil Liberties

Coburn Report on Federal Job Training Programs

By
Tad DeHaven

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn released a report today on federal job training programs in his state. Here’s what Coburn’s intrepid staff found: duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and stupidity. In short, the report is another example of how Washington is better at creating problems than solving them.

The report’s most important takeaway is that providing job training assistance is not a proper function of the federal government:

The convoluted mess of job training programs exists, not because of any well-meaning Oklahoman, but because Congress created a system that is doomed to fail. Employers and communities know best what skills are needed for a successful workforce, not bureaucrats—despite good intent.

What part of this scenario makes sense: Congress taxes Oklahoma employers at record rates, to fund job training programs created by politicians in Washington, only to send taxpayer money back to Oklahoma with rules and regulations that tie the hands of state and local governmental and business and ignore the unique economic and demographic factors of their communities. This scenario is the reality of the employment programs operated by federal government.

The first step Congress took in the wrong direction was a step out of the Constitutional boundaries set forth by our founders. Providing employment and training services is not a role for federal government at all, according to the enumerated powers listed in the U.S. Constitution. [Emphasis in original.]

Of course the scenario doesn’t make any sense, but as a Cato essay on federal employment and training programs notes, federal policymakers are fixated on “doing something”:

More fundamentally, federal employment and training programs don’t fill any critical economic need that private markets don’t already fill. Instead, the federal programs provide an opportunity for policymakers to show that they are “doing something” to help the labor market. To policymakers, federal job training sounds like something that should boost the economy, but five decades of experience indicate otherwise.

Topics: 
Tax and Budget Policy

Medicare Fraud Posse Cackles as If They Laid an Asteroid

By
Michael F. Cannon

What the media blare:

Levinson Snags $515 Million in Health Care Fraud

More than 100 Charged in Massive Medicare Fraud Busts in 7 Cities in Scams Totaling $452 Mil

What I hear:

Drip … … … . drip … … … … .

Why? As the latter article notes, “authorities have targeted fraud that’s believed to cost the government between $60 billion and $90 billion each year.” So add up those two figures, which include frauds that occurred in multiple years, and you get somewhere between 1.1 percent and 1.6 percent of the amount that Medicare and Medicaid enable criminals to steal from taxpayers in a single year.

Neither article makes it clear how paltry these anti-fraud efforts are. But at least the former article asks:

So what is it about the government’s health care programs that make them such inviting targets for white collar criminals?

I answer that question here, and in this video:

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care

‘Health-Care Executive’s Medicare Fraud Scheme Included Lobbying Washington’

By
Michael F. Cannon

In a recent article, I explained:

Politicians routinely subvert anti-fraud measures to protect their constituents. When the federal government began poking around a Buffalo school district that billed Medicaid for speech therapy for 4,434 kids, the New York Times reported, “the Justice Department suspended its civil inquiry after complaints from Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and other politicians”…

It’s not just the politicians. The Legal Aid Society is pushing back against a federal lawsuit charging that New York City overbilled Medicaid. Even conservatives fight anti-fraud measures, albeit in the name of preventing frivolous litigation, when they oppose expanding whistle-blower lawsuits, where private citizens who help the government win a case get to keep some of the penalty.

An indispensable part of this fraud-protection scam are the lobbyists who work to enable fraud or block credible anti-fraud efforts.  The Washington Post reports:

Miami health-care executive Larry Duran orchestrated one of the largest Medicare frauds in U.S. history, submitting more than $205 million in phony claims and landing a record-breaking 50-year prison sentence for his crimes.

But another piece of Duran’s scheme also caught the eye of prosecutors. They say he extended his fraud through his lobbying efforts, all aimed at getting official Washington to make it easier for mental health centers such as his to make money.

An advocacy group he helped set up, the National Association for Behavioral Health (NABH), has spent more than $750,000 on lobbying efforts over the past five years, including staging “fly-ins” on Capitol Hill and providing advice to group members on how to get around Medicare denials, according to the Justice Department. The group also held fundraisers for lawmakers…

“Duran did not stop with just committing a massive fraud on the Medicare program through his own companies. Duran franchised his fraud to others,” trial lawyer Jennifer Saulino wrote in a sentencing memo. The advocacy group he helped found, she said, “provided Duran a legitimate-looking vehicle to lobby Congress to allocate more money, through Medicare, to Duran and his co-conspirators for their fraudulent schemes”…

Duran said he pleaded guilty in the case to atone for his actions…

The basic scheme, records show, worked like this: Duran and Valera paid up to $400,000 a month in kickbacks to assisted living centers, halfway homes and others to procure a steady stream of patients for their clinics, which claimed to be providing group mental health treatment. Doctors frequently faked records or signed off on charts without seeing any patients.

Patients often suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, dementia or other conditions unsuited for therapy and were frequently left to urinate or defecate on themselves as they waited for treatment that never came, testimony showed…

Part of Duran’s strategy, prosecutors alleged, was to use his connections to push for policy changes to benefit his fraudulent business. Justice Department officials said in court testimony that Duran was an NABH founder, a board member and a leading financial contributor…“He had a very integral part of the lobbying role,” FBI agent Patrick Koeth testified during sentencing. “Basically, his involvement was to keep pushing for those lobbying efforts”…

The group boasts of its success in fighting for higher Medicare rates for partial hospitalization programs — the type of service Duran offered — and solicited money for a “policy defense fund” to fight proposed cuts.

Here’s the sound-and-pictures version of my article:

The basic theorem is this: market actors have greater incentives to prevent fraud, because it’s their own money on the line.  Politicians are spending other people’s money, so their incentive to prevent fraud is far less.  Therefore, fraud will always be higher in government programs than in similar market endeavors.

Topics: 
Health Care

Wartime Contracting Report Provides More Evidence to Exit Afghanistan

By
Malou Innocent

Over the past decade, American taxpayers have lost as much as $60 billion dollars to massive fraud and waste in the nation building campaigns of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report released today by the Commission on Wartime Contracting. The independent panel confirms much of what we already know about rent-seeking in wartime; nevertheless, the panel details specific reconstruction projects and programs that display a stunning array of mismanagement:

  • A modest $60 million agricultural development program in northern Afghanistan expanded to the south and east to the tune of $360 million. The cash-for-work program was intended to distribute vouchers for wheat-seed and fertilizer in drought-stricken areas. Today, the program spends $1 million a day. The panel reports, “The pressure to quickly spend the millions of dollars created an environment in which waste was rampant. Paying villagers for what they used to do voluntarily destroyed local initiatives and diverted project goods into Pakistan for resale.”
  • During operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, waste and fraud averaged about “$12 million every day for the past 10 years.” [Emphasis in original];
  • The Department of Defense (DoD) awarded an $82 million contract for the design and construction of an Afghan Defense University. Now, DoD officials say it will cost $40 million a year to operate—beyond the indigenous government’s ability to fund and sustain;
  • The U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Government’s main distributor of development contracts, funded the Khost-Gardez road project. Originally valued at $86 million it has since mushroomed to $176 million;
  • The insurgents’ second-largest funding source is the U.S. taxpayer. Money for construction and transportation projects are diverted to the insurgency so Afghan subcontractors can pay them for protection. Of course, the insurgents use this money to buy bombs, IEDs, and other explosives to kill foreign troops and civilians.

The report goes on and on with examples that should disgust U.S. taxpayers. In addition, the report was released amid news that August 2011 was the deadliest month for U.S. service members, and 2011 shaping up to be the deadliest year for Afghan civilians. Despite the spin from warhawks, people in the region know the coalition has lost. Last year, the “Godfather of the Taliban,” Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, laid out in extensive detail why America has been defeated (for skeptics of withdrawal, it’s worth reading).

The United States has largely disrupted, dismantled, and defeated al Qaeda. America should not go beyond that objective by combating a regional insurgency or drifting into an open-ended occupation. We have endured enough with tens of thousands of people killed, injured, and traumatized, and billions of dollars wasted.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

Washington Post Asks for Budget Plans

By
Tad DeHaven

The Washington Post’s editorial board issued a challenge to the president and his Republican opponents: “show us your plans” for deficit reduction. In fact, the Post says it would be “delighted” to receive plans from its readers. However, the Post isn’t interested in “meaningless promises” to cut “waste, fraud, and abuse”—it wants specifics:

Here’s what we’re not looking for: pablum about eliminating unnecessary spending without identifying where. Gauzy rhetoric about making hard choices without making them. Meaningless promises about eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. Broad assertions about where to find the money — “Medicare savings,” “tax reform” — without specifics. Arbitrary spending caps without accompanying details about how those limits are to be met. If you believe, for example, that federal spending should be kept to a specific share of the economy — 18 percent? 20 percent? — show the plausible path to getting there.

Amen. Chris Edwards and I have been beating the drum for Republican policymakers in particular to get specific about what they would cut. Chris recently noted that with the exception of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), and perhaps a few others, Republicans aren’t putting much effort into identifying programs to terminate. And I have noted that “It’s more common to hear Republicans blubber on about ‘reducing waste, fraud, and abuse’ in government programs and ‘saving’ the pillars of the welfare state (Social Security and Medicare) for ‘future generations.’”

As for deficit reduction ideas from Washington Post readers, we have a balanced budget plan on our Downsizing the Federal Government website. In fact, not only do we have a plan, we have over three dozen essays on numerous government agencies that provide details on what programs to cut and why.

Topics: 
Tax and Budget Policy

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