The deeper they dig, the worse it gets.
The first hearing of the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency was held Wednesday and featured extensive discussion of the domestic and international criminal organizations stealing vast sums of taxpayer dollars from the U.S. government. Haywood Talcove, CEO of Lexis Nexis Risk Solution, described to lawmakers the different kinds of criminals exploiting U.S. government benefits systems, pointing out that Covid relief provided a windfall of over $1 trillion to those criminal elements.
From the DOGE Subcommittee’s First Hearing:
……..Haywood Talcove, the Chief Executive Officer of LexisNexis Risk Solutions for Government, laid out a three-step plan for reclaiming control of federal payment systems: “There’s no excuse for the government to lag if we do the following. Number one, implement identity verification on the front end. Criminals should never receive a dime. Eliminate self-certification. No more honor system for billion-dollar programs. And continuous auditing. Keep verifying because criminals never stop adapting.”
……..Stewart Whitson, the Senior Director of Federal Affairs at the Foundation for Government Accountability, described how policies pushed by the Biden Administration exacted a cost on Americans: “Congress can strengthen the Medicaid program through legislative action. That would include repealing Biden’s disastrous Medicaid streamlining rule, which ties the hands of states trying to remove ineligible release….Congress can help President Trump’s DOJ’s effort by ensuring that entrenched partisan bureaucrats don’t stand in the way of reform so much as DOJ’s team of 30 found hundreds of billions of dollars funneled into wasteful, fraudulent and flat-out insane projects. But they’ve only scratched the surface if this much fraud has been exposed in just a few weeks. Imagine what else is buried under layers of red tape and government excuses.
……..Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.) slammed former President Joe Biden for abusing federal payment systems and contributing to the dangerously high national debt: “Joe Biden signed his name and wanted the American people to believe he had the ability to forgive $250 billion with a signature. Guess what? The Supreme Court ruled he did not. That’s our system of checks and balances. The President, Biden, he clearly was experiencing cognitive decline. He didn’t even have the ability to be charged with a crime as determined by his own Department of Justice. But he signs his name, and he thinks it gives a quarter of trillion dollars away, redistributes taxpayer dollars. It’s just crazy that we can’t come together to address the greatest national security threat facing this country, our debt.”
Subcommittee Chairwoman Greene: “Mr. Talcove, do private sector companies have a lower rate of improper payments than the federal government?”
Mr. Talcove: “Yes. The fraud rate, that the criminals are taking advantage of the public sector is around 20%. In the private sector, it’s around 3%. And it’s really because the tools that are used in the private sector, aren’t used in the public sector. Front end identity verification, self-certification, and then finally, making sure that individuals are who they say they are. If we start using these tools, you will see the fraud rate go down dramatically because for the most part, this fraud isn’t taking place by individuals. It’s individuals whose identities have been stolen on the dark web.”
Subcommittee Chairwoman Greene: “We would say the private companies that pretty much have to exist on a 20% profit rate. They can’t continue to be successful if they were to allow their customers data to be something like that and used by criminals. However, the federal government, who can continue printing checks and continue an operation, never fixes its problems because it can’t be forced to go out of business. Would you agree with that, Yes or no?”
Mr. Talcove: “Yes.”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) blasted DOGE Subcommittee Democrats for defending schemes to defraud American taxpayers. He also pointed out that self-verification systems at local doctors’ offices are more secure than federal payment systems.
Rep. Burchett: “The gravy train for a lot of these folks, it’s been on biscuit wheels. It’s about to run off the dadgum tracks. It’s about done. Could you imagine standing up here and defending waste, fraud, and abuse? But I think that’s what we’re seeing. When people squeal and don’t ask questions, I think it shows the American public what the heck’s going on and that little gravy train is getting ready to run out. The spigot is getting ready to be turned off.”
On Wednesday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) held her DOGE subcommittee hearing and announced it has discovered that over the past 20 years, the U.S. government has squandered $2.7 trillion on improper payments. Just last year alone, the government handed out $170 billion to individuals who were deceased, criminals, or otherwise ineligible for government programs.
Even more alarming, the government made $44 billion in payments with no clear record of where the money actually went — officials simply don’t know.
Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest culprits when it comes to these improper payments. The Biden administration lost a staggering $764 billion due to a combination of inaccurate record-keeping, bureaucratic incompetence, and outright fraud.
……..This isn’t just fraud; it’s a shocking indicator of how little accountability there is in our government. The issue extends beyond mere dollar amounts. Leavitt presented a hypothetical scenario, saying, “There’s also a lot of contracts they’ve identified that, just as a hypothetical example, are a million bucks but only $500,000 went out the door, so where’s the rest of that cash?”
This raises an unavoidable question: how much of this reeled-in fraud was known and overlooked? Why have these programs become breeding grounds for corruption? Who was getting rich?
Their grifting operations have been shut down and the Dems are not pleased.