In our 34th episode of Madness Chronicles, we’ll look at the insanity of the government paying the dead and more.. Remember, insanity is a state of severe mental illness, extremely foolish behavior, and a state of frenzied or chaotic activity. Let’s take a look at the madness of public spending.
Our government agencies recently admitted to making improper payments of an incredible $2.25 trillion since 2004. Last year the total was $175 billion. That boils down to about $15 billion a month, or, drum roll please, $500 million a day and $1 million a minute. If we’re not careful, they’re going to be spending a lot of money one of these days.
What is an improper payment? Big question. These numbers were revealed in a report by a team called Open the Books. Federal law defines the term as payments made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason. The 20 government agencies covered by the report are burning $500 million a day in our taxes. Let that sink in.
The worst offenders were Medicaid, Medicare and the Earned Income Tax Credit. They represent improper payments of $121 billion or 69 percent of the total improper payments. The recovery rate, which means they found their mistake and got the money back, is only 14 cents on the dollar. Who does that? Do you still work for us? Of course, it is the government where accountability is a word in the dictionary, not the union contract.
In 2019, Health and Human Services gave away a whopping $107 billion. Treasury was a booby responsible for giving away just $27 billion, and Veterans Affairs wasted just $12 billion. The last tier of the 20 gifted departments was the Veterans Administration, which squandered $22 billion. The Office of Personnel Management came in last, wasting just $339 billion.
Interestingly, erroneous payments were made to deceased individuals for a staggering $871.9 million. That’s right, the dead not only vote, but also get paid. Since about 2.7 million people die each year in the United States, that means each person killed could have earned $323. However, I doubt it turned out that way. They reported finding the root cause of unexpected death, lack of death verification. Those people master the obvious.
Another item they discovered was that there were 6 million Social Security numbers for people age 112 and older. It is now known that there are only 40 people in the world over the age of 112 in an ironic twist. Apparently our government workers are challenging ‘death verification’.
To be fair, the government is trying to fix it. In 2009, President Obama signed an executive order to stop improper payments. In the 5 years after his order, improper payments by Medicare and Medicaid alone increased by $456 billion. But at least he tried, right? Good news is the Department of Education. In 2018, they overpaid Pell Grants and student loans by $6 billion. In 2019, improper payments were reduced to $1.1 billion, a reduction of 85 percent. Congratulations to Betsy DeVos. The IRS gets the award for honesty. They overpaid nearly $18 billion in 2019 and said it will continue as they don’t have the resources to go after it. What country!
Just thought I’d share something so we all feel better when we fill out our next taxes.
May we wake up from this madness before it’s too late. I wish you good health and until next time, have fun, enjoy life and beware of the madness among us. It’s 2020 and it’s getting out of hand.
