As Tax Day - which I fondly refer to as Government Theft Day - came and went on April 18, did you find yourself plunking down a pile of cash to pay your taxes? Or perhaps you instead put down your direct deposit for a tax “return” on your own money that the government just had borrowed interest-free, to be graciously bequeathed back to you whenever the IRS gets a chance to cut the check.
Then this should make you feel fantastic: the U.S. government, funded by Ours Truly, wasted nearly $250 billion - billion, with a “b” - on erroneous payments last year alone.
True story. According to the Government Accountability Office, the federal government forked out $247 billion in taxpayer cash in wrongful payments, which include things like overpayments or unnecessary payments, in FY2022. CNBC details that about 78% of those errors were over five major federal programs: $80.6 billion wasted in Medicaid, $46.8 billion in Medicare, $29 billion in the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program, $18.9 billion in unemployment insurance, and $18.2 billion in earned income tax credits.
And it’s not like this is a recent problem. The issue of erroneous payments is ongoing and well-documented, coming in at about $2.4 trillion over the past 20 years.
Related: Watch: We Want To Live ‘Like It Was Before The Biden Admin’ - Rep. Hunt Slams High Costs
“The government has just lost, as if you dropped it on the sidewalk, trillions and trillions of dollars over the last few decades,” Richard Stern, a budget and spending expert from the Heritage Foundation, told CNBC. “That is money that was stolen from hardworking Americans to just simply get wasted.”
These erroneous payments make up just a fraction of the federal waste that piles up like dog poop every year. As bad - and expensive - as these screw-ups are, they don’t include all the taxpayer cash the feds dump on bloated agencies, ridiculous grants and studies, empty buildings, unnecessary or duplicate programs, and the salaries of self-aggrandizing bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci.
Happy Tax Day, everyone!