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GAO Finds Massive Waste, Duplication

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March 01, 2011 – Comments (6)

Want to know a big reason for our rising taxes, deficit and deep debt? Blame waste. Says who? The government that’s wasting the money.

Yes, we spend hard-earned tax dollars on government analysts at the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office to ferret out redundancies and waste.

All told, the GAO targeted as much as $510 billion on 583 potentially duplicative, wasteful programs overseen by roughly 182 government agencies and offices, stretching across the federal government, from the Department of Defense to Transportation to Health & Human Services. The GAO found that some of the duplication dates back to 2002, but most came in fiscal years 2009 to 2010 and going forward.

Full article

6 Comments – Post Your Own

#1) On March 01, 2011 at 12:38 PM, RagnarRedbeard (< 20) wrote:

This just in. Water wet. Government inefficient. Film at 11.

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#2) On March 01, 2011 at 2:00 PM, smartmuffin (< 20) wrote:

The GAO itself is an example of waste, seeing as how they always find this stuff and nothing is ever done about it.  It's like having a law enforcement agency staffed entirely by detectives and judges and not having any patrol officers or prison guards.

If you aren't going to fix the problem anyway, then yes, ignorance is bliss.

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#3) On March 01, 2011 at 3:16 PM, rfaramir (30.45) wrote:

Half a trillion won't fund half the added deficit that this administration added in one year. And that's over and above the previous one which was setting record deficits themselves.

I'm not saying it's small potatoes, it's not. I'm saying government shouldn't even be trying to spend this much money. It has always been wasteful. It has always been destructive to society. It is time to reign it in, not further empower it.

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#4) On March 01, 2011 at 5:03 PM, devoish (98.81) wrote:

Fox says they found 1.5 trillion?

 

 In some cases, there is sufficient information available today to show that if actions are taken to address individual issues summarized in this report, financial benefits ranging from the tens of millions to several billion dollars annually may be realized by addressing that single issue. For example, while the Department of Defense is making limited changes to the governance of its military health care system, broader restructuring could result in annual savings of up to $460 million. Similarly, we developed a range of options that could reduce federal revenue losses by up to $5.7 billion annually by addressing potentially duplicative policies designed to boost domestic ethanol production. Likewise, we identified a number of other opportunities for cost savings or enhanced revenues such as reducing improper federal payments totaling billions of dollars, or addressing the gap between taxes owed and paid, potentially involving billions of dollars. Collectively, these savings and revenues could result in tens of billions of dollars in annual savings, depending on the extent of actions taken.

- GAO summary

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#5) On March 01, 2011 at 5:07 PM, devoish (98.81) wrote:

PS.

When I first read your blog I thought the savings were to be achieved in one year. Especiallyafter reading the word "massive" in the title.

It is to bad there isn't anywhere near $500bil we could save annually at the cut of a budget.

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#6) On March 05, 2011 at 1:19 PM, L0RDZ (74.83) wrote:

I just read in the WSJ about how  we needlessly give money to television stations, such that presidents of government funded broadcasting are making way more money than the President of the United Stations,   amazing how much money they can afford to pay themselves when its our money.

Executives at PBS Public Broadcasting System and NBR  National Broadcasting System are raking in massive salaries and are using our taxes to fund lobbying groups to further increase unnecessary funding to themselves.

Heck we even have a special government paid for corporation that pays excessively to distribute tax payer dollars to organizations that do not need tax payer dollars to exist,  such as CPB : Corporation for Public Broadcasting which distributes the tax payer money allocated for public broadcasting to other stations.

According to 2009 tax forms CPB generously compensated its President and CEO Patricia de Stacy Harrison in excess of 300,000 in additional to other compensations.

Yet that is nothing compared to the generous compensation we enable to other executives such as NPR's executive Kevin Klose who received more than 1.2 million in 2009.

Guess who's paying millions of dollars needlessly in over paid over funded unneeded government sponsored entities ?

 

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