Watchdog Group: Biden Administration Wastes $1 Trillion of Your Taxes and Wants to Tax You Even More
President Joe Biden / Getty Images
The Biden administration has been caught paying almost a billion dollars in improper payments to dead people in 2021 and 2022, according to a new report from fiscal watchdog group OpenTheBooks. This is just one example of the extreme largesse of mistaken and overpaid funds that plague the federal government.
Since taking office, the Biden administration has wasted at least $528 billion in improper payments to people who shouldn’t have received them. More than $974 million of those payments went to dead people, according to the report. Federal programs ripe with improper payments include Medicaid, Medicare, and the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program.
While improper payments are nothing new, the Biden administration has failed at an unprecedented level. The $281 billion in improper payments seen during fiscal year 2021 is an all-time high, according to OpenTheBooks, while the $247 billion seen during fiscal year 2022 is “more than every other previous year.”
OpenTheBooks founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski hammered the Biden administration for the improper payments, asking, “What government program is running well under [President Joe] Biden?”
“Biden just doubled the workforce of the IRS and proposed one of the largest tax hikes in history,” Andrzejewski told the Washington Free Beacon. “While on track to waste $1 trillion of your taxes, they want to tax you even more.”
Republican lawmakers have urged Biden to reign in improper spending, with Louisiana Republican senator John Kennedy arguing that doing so would be “an easy win” for the president. But Biden apparently failed to heed the advice, as Paycheck Protection Program fraud ballooned to $29 billion in fiscal year 2022. Additionally, two Social Security assistance programs that are ripe for fraud saw $7.4 billion in improper payments between FY 2021 and FY 2022.
Lawmakers have attempted to bolster cross-agency communication, record keeping, and transparency to limit improper payments, but the Government Accountability Office has indicated that the federal government’s “inability to determine the full extent to which improper payments occur and reasonably assure that appropriate actions are taken to reduce them” is an ongoing problem.
For Kennedy, the improper payments reflect the need to give federal agencies access to a so-called death database.
“One easy step we can take to end this waste and fraud is to give the vast majority of federal agencies access to the complete death database that Social Security maintains so that we know the federal bureaucracy isn’t sending money to people it doesn’t belong to,” Kennedy told the Free Beacon.
Key Takeaways:
The Biden administration has wasted at least $528 billion in improper payments to people who shouldn’t have received them.
More than $974 million of those payments went to dead people.
The $281 billion in improper payments seen during fiscal year 2021 is an all-time high, while the $247 billion seen during fiscal year 2022 is “more than every other previous year.”
Republican lawmakers have urged Biden to reign in improper spending, but the administration has failed to do so.
Lawmakers have attempted to limit improper payments, but the federal government’s “inability to determine the full extent to which improper payments occur and reasonably assure that appropriate actions are taken to reduce them” is an ongoing problem.
