From Oversight to Overlooked: The Government’s Failure to Control Trillions in Misspent Funds

In 20 years the US Government made $2.7 TRILLION in improper expenditures. In fiscal year 2023 alone, GAO determined the federal government improperly dispensed $269 Billion.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), created more than a century ago to assist Congress in its constitutionally mandated oversight responsibilities, issued a report just last year which estimated that in a span of 20 years, including 2023, that the US Government made $2.7 TRILLION dollars in improper expenditures resulting from overpayments, inaccurate record keeping, and fraud. In fiscal year 2023 alone, GAO determined the federal government improperly dispensed $269 Billion.

Let this sink in for those who are getting the vapors about administrative overreach into sensitive Treasury payment systems: TRILLIONS of our tax dollars have been lost through faulty payment systems. Rising taxes, mounting deficits and loss of faith in government are the effects.

The problem isn’t that President Trump and Elon Musk are diving into this, but that sweeping action to attack corruption has not been attempted by Congress, or by the Executive branch, in many a year.

This critical condition is above and beyond political parties and personalities. The failure to root out financial and other corruption in the US government has placed our nation in grave jeopardy through rising, seemingly uncontrollable deficits.

Government elites, kleptocrats, conniving with contractors, have long enabled this perilous condition, not the work-a-day federal employees.

The revolving door, individuals moving from high office in government to highly paid positions in the private sector, and back to the revolving door, has represented a takeover of the government by private interests.

This awareness inspires caution about the motives, intent and direction of the present bureaucratic realignment.

As a member of the Government Oversight Committee for 16 years, I yelled “stop thief,” many times into a din of indifference, inertia and blind acceptance of corruption as the implicate order. It was extraordinary to witness elected officials who helplessly shrugged at a system riddled with thievery while they, and they alone, were empowered to set it right.

Years before I was elected to Congress, I was Mayor of Cleveland. In my first year in office, I was able to cut city government spending by 10% without reducing service --through the elimination of waste, fraud and abuse - and ran the government on a cash basis.

I look at present federal spending, approaching $7 Trillion annually, $5.2 Trillion coming from revenues and $1.9 Trillion borrowed (adding to the deficit), with the interest on the national debt now exceeding $1 Trillion dollars annually.

I can easily envision that the elimination of waste, fraud and abuse at a federal level could save the American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars annually, helping to protect revenues for basic government services and lowering the national debt’s dangerous trajectory.

As the President’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative moves relentlessly through the innards of the federal government, it exposes decades of failure of administrative responsibility for the custody of U.S. taxpayers’ money.

I am not, nor have I been an apologist for this or any White House. Immediately, I am deeply concerned about the potential destruction which may be visited upon the American people by the summary firings and defunding of entire government agencies.

Yes, the government is riddled with waste. It is also true that the government provides essential services, programs and lifelines for millions. There clearly needs to be a reset, but it can and must be done with care and caution consistent with forming a more perfect union. Public money for public good.

Congress, as a body, has for years failed to act on the systemic corruption which its own auditors uncovered. Upon receiving detailed reports on misspending Congress could have denied funds to departments and agencies until accounts were put in order. It did not. Instead, offending agencies often saw their budgets increase.

The Supreme Court may ultimately decide on legitimate questions of the constitutionality of DOGE’s bull-in-the-china-shop approach, its end-run of Congress’ statutory authority to create an operative federal department, and its indiscriminate reduction of the federal work force.

The revelations of the staggering amounts of money involved in misspending, government waste, fraud and abuse will surely shock most American taxpayers who, at best, are living paycheck to paycheck, and once informed of the scope of waste of their tax dollars will demand action to stop it.