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Call for Government Efficiency Commission intensify over jaw-dropping government accountability report

September 5, 2024 | | Print Article

A government accountability report published in April has resurfaced amid billionaire Elon Musk’s call for a government efficiency commission.

Published by the Government Accountability Office, the report revealed that the federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.

In fairness, the study period ran from 2018 to 2022, meaning the COVID-19 pandemic era was included. During that time, the government wasted a lot of money.

The GAO nevertheless found that fraud spending between 2018 and 2022 reached as high as seven percent of total federal spending. That reportedly amounted to two percent of the nation’s GDP.

Calling America’s financial health “unsustainable,” the GAO in April recommended significant reforms to “reduce the loss of federal dollars and help improve the federal government’s fiscal outlook.”

“Given the scope of this problem, a government-wide approach is required to address it,” the GAO said in a statement. “The Office of Management and Budget, working with agencies and the oversight community, should develop guidance to improve fraud-related data—providing a more uniform approach to what data is collected and how.”

“Also, Treasury should identify methods to expand government-wide estimates of fraud—prioritizing higher-risk program areas,” the statement continued.

But surprise, surprise, the leftist Biden-Harris administration disagreed with the whole premise that the federal government is wasteful.

“Even before its release, though, the GAO report drew sharp, rare rebukes from the White House Office of Management and Budget, which raised significant concerns with its methodology in a formal letter released alongside the analysis,” according to the Washington Post.

“Jason Miller, the deputy director for management at OMB, stressed the fraud estimate is ‘not based on analysis of estimated losses by individual federal programs,’ but rather, is a government-wide figure derived from a ‘simulation model,'” the Post reported.

But the GAO’s figures have ALWAYS been derived from simulation models. The only difference this time around appears to be that the White House is staffed with reality-denying leftists.

One individual who’s not a reality denier is Musk, who previously proposed that the federal government launch a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Musk issued the proposal after former President Donald Trump said during a Reuters interview that he was open to granting Musk a position within his administration should he be reelected to office in November.

The billionaire responded with the following tweet:

Speaking of which, this week Trump is expected to endorse the idea.

“Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump plans on Thursday to throw his weight behind the creation of a U.S. government efficiency commission recommended by billionaire Elon Musk that would seek to eliminate waste in the federal government,” Reuters reported, citing anonymous insider sources.

“The former president has been discussing the idea of a government efficiency commission with aides for weeks, people with knowledge of those conversations have said. This, however, will be the first time he will publicly endorse the idea, which Musk, a major donor and prominent supporter, has advocated,” according to Reuters.

Musk responded to the news with excitement:

Dovetailing back to the GAO report, House Budget Committee chair Jodey Arrington, a Republican, responded to it back in April by stressing the need for Congress to do its own part to “rein in waste.”

“To restore fiscal responsibility to Washington, we must root out the rampant fraud and abuse of a wasteful and bloated bureaucracy,” he said. “GAO’s latest alarming report, which found that up to half a trillion in taxpayer dollars are squandered annually, underscores the urgency of the work the House Budget Committee and United States House is conducting to rein in waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Vivek Saxena
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