The Washington Examiner recently reported that the two states bordering the nation’s capital are two of the five worst states for food stamp fraud. The above table shows the inverse relationship between the number of food stamp recipients and the percentage of cases investigated for fraud in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. While the number of food stamp recipients has significantly increased (now up to a total of 45 million Americans) the percentage of cases investigated for fraud has not increased or even remained constant. The result is …
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has a powerful ally in the fight to eliminate wasteful duplication in government programs: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced the two lawmakers are teaming up for a bipartisan, House-Senate effort to eliminate overlapping and unaccountable government services that cost taxpayers more than $100 billion a year. A recent Government Accountability Office report on government waste revealed the extent of duplication. Now the two Republicans want Congress to do something about it. Cantor has directed House committee chairmen to look at the GAO’s recommendations for …
Recent hearings in both the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation and the Senate Finance Committee took a closer look at fraud within Medicare and Medicaid. Spending on Medicare and Medicaid is on an unsustainable path due to rising health care costs and an aging population. Meanwhile, fraud within the program contributes to the program’s cost by an estimated $60 billion a year. Medicaid, the federal–state partnership to provide health care to the poor and disabled, is a victim of abuse as well. Reducing health care costs …
House Republicans could fulfill their Pledge to America promise of cutting $100 billion simply by eliminating duplicative government programs. That’s the startling news from a new Government Accountability Office report today that exposes widespread waste in the federal government. GAO’s 345-page report (PDF) was initiated more than a year ago when Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) forced a 94-0 Senate vote on the issue. Now, each year GAO must identify federal programs, agencies, offices and initiatives with duplicative goals and activities. It’s up to Congress to act, but given the recent …
Exposing the extent to which criminal law has expanded, the Supreme Court today narrowed the scope of the federal “honest services” fraud statute and called into question the validity of Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling’s conviction. Justice Sonia Sotomayor and two other “liberal” justices would have gone even further than the majority and granted Skilling a new trial. All nine justices agreed, however, that the government’s “honest services” theory overreached. Using astoundingly vague, overbroad language, the “honest services” statute makes it a federal crime, punishable by up to 20 years in …
“Fraud,” “deceit,” and “exploitation.” Those words were used this week at a hearing about the Head Start program–the federal government’s long-standing preschool program for low-income children. An investigation carried out by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), revealed several cases of underreporting of income and the falsification of addresses by Head Start employees in order to “qualify” children for the program. Head Start grantees receive money based on the number of children they serve. As reported in an Education and Labor committee hearing on May 18, reports of two fraudulent cases …
The New York Times reports: The Environmental Protection Agency has directed two of its lawyers to makes changes to a YouTube video they posted that is critical of the Obama administration’s climate change policy. The EPA lawyers did take their video down. But not before others reposted it. Watch:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSNQzSjb38g[/youtube]
President Obama again trumpeted his claim last night, that we need government-run health insurance “to help keep the insurance companies honest.” He should check with his own Justice Department about dishonesty in government-run health plans. The state and city governments in New York this week agreed to pay a $540 million fine, $440 million from the state and $100 million from the city, to settle accusations that they defrauded Medicaid. It’s a record-high Medicaid recovery from a public entity. According to the Department of Justice press release, the governments “knowingly …
If former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, the greenest of all the greens, the man who played an integral role in starting the Environmental Protection Agency and passing the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, opposes cap and trade, it’s probably not a good idea. Here’s what Nader told the New York Times concerning cap and trade: I mean, it’s not going to work. It’s too complex. It’s too easily manipulated politically. Right now, they’re having a battle over whether they can even auction the credits off for money. The industry …
As we’ve documented before, one of the major selling points liberals deploy when arguing for socialized medicine is how much government run health care will save Americans in administrative costs. And it is true: Medicare does not spend nearly as much on oversight as private insurance does managing claims. But that lack of oversight comes with its own steep price tag: fraud. Congressional Quarterly reports: Nearly half of the 491 South Florida medical equipment companies kicked out of Medicare in 2007 on suspicion that they were fraudulent were let back …
