Committee on Homeland Security and Gover

Duplication, Waste, and Fraud in Federal Programs Committee on Homeland Security and Gover

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Inspectors General (IGs) are our go-to Agencies in government for rooting out, identifying and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse (WFA) as well as duplicated programs. The reports by GAO started with a pretty simple amendment, offered in 2010 by Senator Coburn, in the debate over increasing the debt ceiling. The GAO was asked to start issuing reports and doing inspections on different duplicative programs; that has resulted in $75 billion worth of savings over 7 years. Based on the amount of budget authority that GAO has-$3.8 billion over that same timeframe-that is a 20:1 return on investment (ROI). We got a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on the long-term debt and deficit. The projected deficit, over the next 30 years, is $129 trillion. That is about almost $10 trillion over the next decade, $37 trillion in the second decade, and $82 trillion in the third decade. To put that in perspective, the entire private net asset base of the United States-in other words, all of the assets held by businesses and households-is equal to $128 trillion. This is, by the way, to be tacked on top of our $20 trillion of debt-$62,500 for every man, woman, and child in America.