(TheIndependentStar.com) – If current trends continue, the Biden-Harris administration will likely exceed the bombshell amount of $1 trillion in improper payments by the time Joe Biden leaves office.
According to a report from watchdog group Open The Books, an improper payment is defined as one “made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount or for the wrong reason,” based on federal standards.
Between 2021 and 2023, the administration oversaw $801.4 billion in such payments after adjusting for inflation, the report found.
Even though the 2024 figures for improper payments will not be made public until after November’s election, over $200 billion has been erroneous in each year of the Biden presidency.
According to the report, barring something unforeseen, the Biden-Harris administration will surpass the $1 trillion mark in total improper payments.
“President Biden and his successors must take more action to address the proliferation of improper payments, beyond mere rhetoric,” said Christopher Neefus, Open The Books’ director of communications.
He continued, “The sheer magnitude of misspent taxpayer dollars is tough to comprehend. Put into perspective, the most recent Pentagon funding bill cost $883 billion; that means the Biden administration will have misspent more than it takes to fund our national defense for a whole year.”
While government waste is not a new phenomenon, the Biden-Harris administration has accelerated it.
GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s administration disclosed $814 billion in improper payments, adjusted for inflation, over four years—slightly more than what Biden’s administration has spent in just three.
According to Open The Books’ calculations, Biden’s administration has misspent about $7,500 every second. In 2021, 7.16% of federal payments were improper, a rate that dropped to 5.4% in 2023.
In addition, reports of improper payments are likely underestimated. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has pointed out that Congress has not authorized all federal programs to estimate erroneous payments, and some fraud likely goes undetected by authorities.
The largest share of improper payments in 2023 came from Medicaid and Medicare, which together accounted for $101.5 billion. COVID-19 relief programs also contributed tens of billions in improper payments.
Furthermore, Open The Books found that the Office of Personnel Management made hundreds of millions in payments to deceased individuals and prisoners, and the IRS incorrectly disbursed $25 billion in tax credits.
A bipartisan group in the House is advocating for the Improper Payments Transparency Act, introduced in May. This act would require the president’s budget to highlight common payment errors and propose ways to fix them.
This waste adds to the U.S.’s ballooning national debt, which crossed $35 trillion for the first time in July.
Although Biden has claimed credit for cutting the deficit, a June report from the Congressional Budget Office found that his foreign aid and student loan policies were actually increasing the country’s budget shortfall.
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