The watchdog agency, known as the GAO, is looking at the federal budget from fiscal years 2018 to 2022 between the Trump and Biden administrations, as well as the new budget that Democrats and Republicans alike provided historic aid that has been repeatedly targeted by fraudsters. The estimates were calculated by examining the federal budget up until the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.
Utilizing a complex economic model, GAO found that fraud in the past few years may have reached 7% of federal spending, with the highest spike likely coinciding with past abuses of coronavirus relief funds. I calculated it to be expensive.
GAO did not pinpoint fraud in specific federal programs and stressed that its analysis cannot be used to predict future federal losses. But it still presented the surprising finding as a stark warning to Washington, where the federal debt has soared to more than $34.5 trillion this year.
The report called the nation's fiscal health “unsustainable” and called for significant reforms that would “help reduce the loss of federal funds and improve the federal government's fiscal outlook.”
But even before its release, the GAO report received a rare sharp rebuke from the White House Office of Management and Budget, which raised serious concerns about its methodology in a formal letter released alongside Tuesday's analysis. .
Jason Miller, OMB's deputy director for management, said the fraud estimates “are not based on an analysis of estimated losses from individual federal programs,” but rather are government-wide numbers derived from “simulation models.” He emphasized that.
Mr. Miller pointed to GAO's own recognition that it lacks adequate data to accurately identify the full extent of waste, fraud, and abuse in some federal programs. And he said the release would “cause confusion and promote misleading generalizations unrelated to the facts” about federal spending.
The new report is still likely to infuriate Congress. The party's fiscal hawks have long lamented the federal government's scourge of waste, fraud and abuse, even if they have done little to address the root causes of the problems. GAO has repeatedly called on Congress to adopt several basic reforms that could improve federal spending data and strengthen the government's ability to spot fraud, but Democrats and Republicans have often pushed back on its demands. I've been ignoring it.
GAO's indictment arrives a week after the White House announced new legislation in collaboration with Senate Democrats to crack down on fraud targeting federal programs. The $1.3 billion bill fulfills President Biden's two-year-old request by investing new resources in the fight against identity theft, using real Americans' information to steal unwarranted government benefits. The purpose is to scare away scammers who get .
Identity theft has long plagued governments, but it has emerged as one of the most costly and devastating scourges during the coronavirus pandemic. Criminals repeatedly used stolen information from real Americans to defraud government programs that were supposed to help out-of-work Americans and businesses on the verge of going out of business.
Underscoring the issue, the Justice Department last week charged more than 3,500 defendants and secured the seizure or forfeiture of more than $1.4 billion in connection with illegally obtained coronavirus relief funds from 2021 onwards. announced. In support of the new anti-fraud law, Attorney General Merrick Garland added that the government's efforts are “not finished” yet.
