The federal government's wasteful spending is not limited to the living. The House Education and Workforce Committee is investigating $127 million from the 2021 American Rescue Plan that went to a pension fund to pay out benefits for Americans who are deceased. Further exacerbating the problem, Republican members of the committee say the Biden administration has failed to property respond to inquiries about the payments, and what is being done to correct them. The lack of action "suggests a total disregard for taxpayer dollars," according to a letter from the committee.
This type of waste and fraud is frustrating, but unfortunately typical of large federal spending bills. "The American Rescue Plan wasn't necessary, and in fact was very wasteful, as these latest reports tell us," says Vance Ginn, Texas-based economic consultant. "This latest evidence of more fraud, waste, and abuse of scarce taxpayer money should be another example of why we've got to get rid of this excessive spending."
Ginn tells KTRH there are numerous examples like this just in the last four years. "Since the pandemic, we've had money going to unemployment insurance that wasn't even going to the right people...you've also had money going to dead people...and there was the Paycheck Protection Program that was used wastefully and fraudulently," he says.
While individual agencies try to claw and peck back some of this waste, Ginn argues the only real solution is to rein in out-of-control federal spending, which has landed us $34 trillion in debt. "All government does is perpetuate more government," he says. "We've got mass waste, fraud and abuse, not necessarily by the people getting the money, but by the government---the politicians and bureaucrats who are doling out the money."
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