Doctors Took Bribes to Help Steal Millions from Medicare

The corrupt former president of a New Jersey lab testing firm said hundreds of doctors demanded bribes and kickbacks as part of a $100 million dollar Medicare and insurance billing scheme. Click here for complete article.

The Waste List

Click here to view a "waste list" that currently totals $57,322,568,479

GAO: Government not cutting waste

Congress and the Obama administration have scrapped just a fraction of the duplicative programs targeted for cuts by Government Accountability Office (GAO), the agency’s chief told lawmakers Wednesday. Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro said just 12 percent of more than 300 recommendations issued by GAO since 2011 to eliminate, combine or modify duplicative programs have been fully carried out.

The hearing follows the release of the latest in a series of GAO reports finding billions of taxpayer dollars are being wasted on government overlap spread across dozens of federal agencies.

Among its findings is the existence of two separate programs responsible for federal catfish inspections, 76 different drug abuse programs and a general lack of coordination between departments charged with providing veterans services.

The Pentagon has wasted $82 million in unnecessary expenses for military uniforms that now come in seven different camouflage patterns. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is in danger of losing $8.35 billion over 10 years on an unproven Medicare Advantage bonus program, the GAO found.

The report identified billions more in revenue lost as a result of untargeted enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service and dozens of contracts awarded by the Department of Homeland Security that overlapped with activities already conducted elsewhere in the department. Together the contracts totaled roughly $66 million.

Government Waste Adds Up

Here are some excerpts from a Newsnet5.com post on government waste:

• More than 45,000 government-owned buildings are empty or half empty, according to the office of management and budget. It costs about a billion dollars a year.
• Taxpayers spent $800,000 last year for congressional representatives to drink bottled water.
• A program produced in India that’s funded with $20 million in taxes from something called the market access program. The market access program gets $200 million a year at the Department of Agriculture that subsidizes marketing for profitable U.S. companies overseas.

Christmas Tree Tax is Back

The House Agriculture Committee approved an amendment to its farm bill that would lift the stay blocking implementation of the Christmas tree tax. We should be thankful the Agriculture Committee does not have jurisdiction over toys.

Some in the Christmas tree industry sought to develop a promotional program to assist its industry. After three failed attempts to set up a voluntary system, they turned to the federal government to do what it could not: Force Christmas tree producers and importers to pay for a Christmas tree promotion program.

On November 8, 2011, the Obama Administration issued a final rule that approved a new program to help promote Christmas trees. The government would set up a Christmas Tree Promotion Board, with one of its goals being “to enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States.” The new program would include a 15 cent “assessment” on fresh cut Christmas trees, which could eventually rise to 20 cents per tree.

EPA contractors lifted weights, watched TV as warehouse rotted

The Environmental Protection Agency paid $750,000 a year to a warehouse contractor in suburban Washington whose employees watched television and lifted weights while taxpayer-paid supplies decayed in moldy, rat-infested conditions, an internal investigation found. Inspector General Arthur A. Elkins‘ report about the “deplorable” conditions inside the 70,000 square foot facility in Landover, Md., stunned top EPA officials and prompted the immediate removal of the contractor.

The facility had new appliances received in 2007 and new furniture received in 2008 that were unopened along with old federal employee passports with personal information that were kept in unsecured containers. The warehouse had “considerable amounts of unusable, inoperable and obsolete furniture” and outdated stocks of paper and print shop supplies.

Employees set up personal spaces within the warehouse with televisions and decorations, including pin-up posters, chairs and couches, he said. They shielded them from security cameras with dividers and storage boxes and set up a gym with surplus weight-lifting equipment, carpeted with EPA tiles, that was maintained in good working order, Elkins said, even as the rest of the warehouse showed signs of rat infestation and mold. The workers used EPA stationary to record workouts and played music on EPA equipment.

IRS Conferences - $50 Million

The IRS spent close to $50 million on 225 conferences between 2010 and 2012, according to briefings given to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Several IRS employees stayed in presidential suites at hotels, the committee learned. Such suites currently cost between $1,500 to $3,500 per night.

"One example in Anaheim, when they bought their tickets they said, 'Well, we'll pay the per diem rate for these hotel rooms.' They didn't negotiate, they didn't bid it. And this was 2,700 folks. So they could have gotten a considerable reduction. Instead what they said is, 'We'll pay full boat, but we want some perks.' So they ended up with free drinks, they ended up with tickets to games, basically kickbacks."

Fifteen outside speakers were hired to give presentations at the conference, totaling $135,000, the oversight committee was told. One of the speakers, who was paid $17,000, led a session called "Leadership Through Art." The IRS spent $50,000 to produce two videos that were shown at the event.

The purpose of the conference was listed as continuing professional education, but credits were not given to attendees, the committee learned. Also, no sign-in sheets were posted outside training sessions, making it difficult to determine if attendees actually went to the sessions.

Federal workers more likely to die than lose jobs

Federal employees' job security is so great that workers in many agencies are more likely to die of natural causes than get laid off or fired. Death - rather than poor performance, misconduct or layoffs - is the primary threat to job security at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management and Budget and a dozen other federal operations. The federal government fired 0.55% of its workers in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 - 11,668 employees in its 2.1 million workforce.

The 1,800-employee Federal Communications Commission and the 1,200-employee Federal Trade Commission didn't lay off or fire a single employee last year. The SBA had no layoffs, six firings and 17 deaths in its 4,000-employee workforce. When job security is at a premium, the federal government remains the place to work for those who want to avoid losing a job. The job security rate for all federal workers was 99.43% last year and nearly 100% for those on the job more than a few years.

White-collar federal workers have almost total job security after a few years on the job. Last year, the government fired none of its 3,000 meteorologists, 2,500 health insurance administrators, 1,000 optometrists, 800 historians or 500 industrial property managers. The nearly half-million federal employees earning $100,000 or more enjoyed a 99.82% job security rate in 2010. Only 27 of 35,000 federal attorneys were fired last year. None was laid off. Death claimed 33.

Feds post 27,000 high-paying job openings during sequester

The budget cuts known as sequestration were supposed to wreak havoc, forcing the shrinking of critical workforces including airport security officers and food inspectors. But since sequestration kicked in March 4, the government has posted openings for 4,300 federal job titles to hire some 10,300 people.

The median position has a salary topping out at $76,000, and one-fourth of positions pay $113,000 or more, according to an analysis by The Washington Times of federal job listings. Altogether, the jobs will pay up to $792 million per year. Including job postings that have been open since before sequestration, the government is in the market for 27,000 employees who will make up to $1.8 billion a year.

They include jobs to provide services to military personnel on bases around the world, including 71 bartenders and 123 waiters. Nearly 200 positions related to Army-run bowling alleys are also open. One position in Hawaii pays up to $110,000 — plus a 12 percent cost-of-living adjustment — to oversee such recreation facilities.

An email from one federal agency indicated that it was intentionally placing the brunt of the cuts on critical and high-profile positions instead of low-priority jobs to lend credence to the dire warnings it had proffered to Congress in a plea for more funding.

In February, Mr. Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, wrote to the Office of Management and Budget to point out that “at the same time the administration is warning sequestration could force laying off or furloughing U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, Defense civilian employees, or food safety inspectors, the federal government is also soliciting applicants for numerous lower priority jobs.”

Even men of the cloth, who have sworn a vow of poverty, appear to make good money at the federal government, with a dozen chaplain jobs paying up to $100,000 listed since sequestration.

Dead welfare recipients collecting millions of dollars

A state audit has revealed that Massachusetts has given out $18 million in “questionable public assistance benefits” in recent years, in cases that included the distribution of benefits to more than 1,160 people who were either dead or using the Social Security number of a deceased person. In some cases, recipients began receiving benefits for the first time after their deaths. Click here for more information.

Victims of Government

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has started a "Victims of Government" website that features victims of over-regulation. Here are some interesting numbers regarding the cost of regulation...

The Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy estimates that it costs Americans $1.75 trillion to comply with federal regulations each year.  To put $1.75 trillion into perspective, that amount is larger than all but eight economies in the world.  It also means that over 10% of the U.S. economy is spent on trying to satisfy rules issued by Washington bureaucrats. That doesn't even include federal, state, and local taxes. 

This heavy regulatory burden diverts resources from innovation to compliance, discourages business investment, and chills job creation. It is no accident that as Washington adds new regulations, more and more Americans are unemployed and underemployed.

From 2003 to 2010, agencies did not publish Notices of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRMs) for approximately 35% of rules with a cost of $100 million or more. This number has nearly doubled since 1998.   NPRMs alert the public that the agency is considering a regulation, gives the public the opportunity to comment on the proposed regulation, and allows the agency to use public input to revise the regulation.  GAO found that when agencies consider public input while drafting legislation, the regulations are often improved and cost less. 

Elected leaders need to carefully consider the costs and negative unintended consequences of unnecessary federal regulations.  They need to remember that real people must comply with these regulations and that making them overly burdensome stifles American growth.

Obamacare: Taxpayers Must Report Personal Health ID Info to IRS

Here are some excerpts from an Americans For Tax Reform article:

When Obamacare’s individual mandate takes effect in 2014, all Americans who file income tax returns must complete an additional IRS tax form. The new form will require disclosure of a taxpayer’s personal identifying health information in order to determine compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. As confirmed by IRS testimony to the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment”.

This new tax information document must, at a minimum, contain: the name and health insurance identification number of the taxpayer; the name and tax identification number of the health insurance company; the number of months the taxpayer was covered by this insurance plan; and whether or not the plan was purchased in one of Obamacare’s “exchanges”. This will involve millions of new tax documents landing in mailboxes across America every January, along with the usual raft of W-2s, 1099s, and 1098s.  At tax time, the 140 million families who file a tax return will have to get acquainted with a brand new tax filing form.  Six million of these families will end up paying Obamacare’s individual mandate non-compliance tax penalty.

Disabled Nation: Small Fraction Leave Disability Because They Work or Get Better

The Patriot Post has an informative article on the federal disability program signed into law in 1956. Here are some excerpts:

The disability program predictably became a one-way street to government dependency -- a street that gets wider, better paved and more heavily trafficked every year. In 2011, 8,575,544 workers took federal disability benefits. According to the program's latest annual statistical report, which covers 2011, only approximately 0.7 percent of the people on disability that year managed to get off the program because their condition improved or they returned to work and made too much money to still qualify for benefits.

Between 1776 and the early 1950s, Americans built a great nation without a single person collecting a single dime of federal disability benefits. But what has happened to America since Eisenhower signed his law? We have become a disabled nation. The total number of U.S. disability beneficiaries now exceeds the total population of Greece. As of this April, according to the Social Security Administration, the disability program was paying benefits to 10,962,532 individuals. That included a record 8,865,586 disabled workers, 1,936,236 children of disabled workers and 160,710 spouses of disabled workers.

What exactly has forced all these Americans to stop working and start taking checks from the government? Well, the largest categories were those with bad backs, bad ligaments and bad moods. Of the 8,575,544 "workers" in 2011 collecting disability, 2,488,374 -- or 29 percent -- did not work because of problems with their "musculoskeletal system and connective tissue." Another 1,304,851 -- or 15.2 percent -- did not work because they had a "mood disorder."

Over the past four and a half decades, the ratio of full-time workers to disabled workers has dramatically declined. In January 1968, there were 64,640,000 full-time workers and 1,202,115 workers taking disability -- a ratio of 54 to 1. In January 2013, there were 115,918,000 full-time workers and 8,830,026 workers taking disability -- a ratio of 13 to 1.

The declining ratio of full-time workers to disabled worker is evidence of a dramatic cultural change. America's work ethic has been replaced by the dependency ethic compounded by the disability ethic.

"Free" Phones

1 in 10 Maryland residents get their telephone free from the Lifeline subsidy program. The Baltimore Sun reported Sunday that the number signed up for free telephones in the aptly named Free State has exploded 90-fold from a mere 5,821 in 2008 to nearly 509,000 in 2012. The number would have been higher if not for a targeted Federal Communications Commission audit that pushed more than 230,000 freeloading Marylanders off the program late last year.

The Lifeline program was started as part of the Universal Service Fund in 1985. Legislators from rural states thought it was a great idea to tax the telephones of city dwellers to cover the cost of running telephone lines to remote locations in, for example, Alaska. With tens of billions in taxes paid, the goal of universal service was accomplished. Landline phones are widely available with wireless alternatives available to fill gaps in availability. So the program shifted focus.

As much as supporters insist this program is needed for the poor, it smells more like a program for well-connected cronies. Calls have grown louder on Capitol Hill for congressional review, reform or even repeal of Lifeline. Reformers must be prepared, however, to run up against a gantlet of proponents, including telecommunications companies that have profited handsomely from this corporate welfare. The top Lifeline provider, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim’s TracFone, has received $1,506,634,841 from taxpayers. Mr. Slim is one of the major shareholders of The New York Times. Telecommunications firms won’t give up without a fight, and it’s up to the public, gouged on every telephone bill, to tell Congress to hang up the phone.

Illegal Aliens Got Food Stamps by the “Vanload”

Here are some excerpts from a JudicialWatch.org article regarding illegal aliens getting food stamps:

For decades the U.S. government has knowingly given illegal immigrants food stamps, according to a former certification case worker who denounced the costly practice back in the 1980s but was essentially ordered to keep a lid on it.

The retired assistant case manager, Craig McNees, was in charge of vetting food-stamp applicants in north Florida and Indiana in the ’80s and says the program was infested with fraud and corruption that was perpetually ignored by management. “Illegals would come in by the vanload and we were told to give them their stuff,” McNees said. “Management knew very well they were illegal. It was so rampant that some employees would tell their illegal relatives to come get food stamps.”

The retired case worker who contacted JW says in the three years he worked in a Sarasota food-stamp office, he found more than 500 cases of fraud but management ignored them all instead pushing a yearly quota. “They just said that if we don’t give out as many as last year, we don’t get our money,” McNees said. “It was crazy, like a three-ring circus; like the inmates were running the asylum.”

Adding insult to injury, last spring the USDA Inspector General revealed that many food-stamp recipients use their welfare benefit to buy drugs, weapons and other contraband from unscrupulous vendors. Some trade food stamps for reduced amounts of cash, the USDA watchdog told Congress, disclosing that the fraud has cost taxpayers nearly $200 million. None of this surprises McNees, who claims he witnessed so much fraud as a food-stamp case worker that he “could write a book.”