One thing we can all agree on: plugging the money leaks

Every politician talks about ending waste fraud and abuse. But it never seems to pan out. And so we get the impression it really doesn’t really exist.

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But according to the Government Accountability Office, it very much exists.

Christopher Mihms, the top guy at the Government Accountability Office, explaining on CSPAN that $1.4 trillion leaked out of the Treasury because of improper payments over the last 13 years. Checks for Medicaid, Medicare, Direct Loans that shouldn’t have been sent.

And then there’s the tax gap:

“There’s $400 billion annual gap,” Mihms said. “That’s the difference between what’s legally owed and what’s actually collected.”

Yes, that’s $400 billion dollars a year going uncollected! And sometimes, it’s just plain old fraud.

“But a large part of that tax gap is just the complexity of the tax code that people wanting to make the right decision just make the wrong decision,” Mihms said. “Many of us, you want to do the right thing, you think you’re doing the right thing, you hope you are.”

But you can’t, because some of these tax forms might as well be encrypted.

So let’s add all that up:

“You take that $400 billion; you couple that with $144 billion in improper payments, we start making just small percentages: 5-, 10-, 15-percent reductions in that and your funding a couple cabinet departments,” Mihms said. “And all of this is money that’s already legally owed or money that’s improperly paid.”

At a time when no one seems to agree on anything, is there anybody who doesn’t agree that plugging the money leaks might be a good place to start?

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