Examples of waste for

First Lady Michelle Obama hosted a “Nowruz” celebration of the Iranian New Year, throwing open the doors of the White House earlier this week to mark the official start of the Persian holiday that’s been celebrated for thousands of years. Nowruz means “The New Day” and is the name of the Iranian New Year, marking the beginning of the year in the Persian calendar.
—WesternJournalism

Outerlimits wrote:Bush’s vacations–unlike Obama’s–were not lavish and his family go on separate vacations.  

33) Used tax dollars to glorify murderers:

The Obama administration spent $1.6 million to restore graffiti that glorified communist murderers Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/obama-252/

If President Barack Obama’s immigration plan gets past a federal court injunction and 60 percent of illegals apply for deferred action protection under the plan, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency projects that it may have to hire an additional 3,100 employees, with a total program cost of up to $484 million a year.

In a detailed response to questions from Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee about the cost of processing the illegals at a newly rented facility in Arlington, Va., the USCIS said “planning was based on the assumption that 60 percent of all individuals who may be considered for DACA or DAPA would elect to file a request.” (See Responses to Questions from Grassley-Johnson-Sessions 02.26.15 (3).pdf)

“Should that initial planning estimate hold true and the injunction were lifted, USCIS might ultimately need to increase its hiring plan up to a total of 3,100 new employees at an annual cost of $184.3 million, and total program costs of between $324 and $484 million per year,” said the agency in its response to Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), and Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).

The USCIS is the agency responsible for managing legal immigration to the United States. The president’s executive actions – Deferred Action to Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA) – will raise costs for the USCIS as it seeks to process illegal immigrants on top of its regular work.

Grassley, Johnson, and Sessions sent a letter to the USCIS on Jan. 22 asking for cost details of the deferred action programs, particularly in relation to operating a leased building in Arlington, Va., at an estimated cost of $26 million, to house the federal workers and some private contractors who will be hired to process the illegal immigrants.

The USCIS response to the senators, dated Feb. 26, 2015, explains that the Arlington facility is 280,039 sq. ft. with a monthly rent of $647,590. The lease agreement is set to expire in April 2016, and the annual rent for the facility is $7,771,092. (See Responses to Questions from Grassley-Johnson-Sessions 02.26.15 (3).pdf)

The total cost to “set up” the facility is $26,231,296, the response states. This includes $4 million for telephones and electronics; $2.95 million for “infrastructure enhancements”; nearly $2.7 million for desks and workstations; and $1.7 million for “data, voice and video infrastructure.”

It also includes $1.5 million for renovations and furniture; $1.1 million for barcode readers and printers; and $1.2 million for federal guards.

The agency noted in its response that it expects to spend an additional $21 million on salaries and benefits for the roughly 1,000 additional employees needed to staff the facility. This is on top of the nearly $5.6 million it would spend on background checks; $105,000 for drug testing; and $775,000 on travel and materials for immigration officer training.

The agency would also need to hire about 400 more employees to help implement the expansion of the President’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA), the letter stated.

However, the agency warned that the costs could more than triple over time if a federal court injunction issued on Feb. 17, which temporarily halted the president’s executive actions, is overturned.

“Should that initial planning estimate hold true and the injunction were lifted, USCIS might ultimately need to increase its hiring plan up to a total of 3,100 new employees at an annual cost of $184.3 million, and total program costs of between $324 and $484 million per year,” the agency said.

Top officials for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services confirmed to members of Congress on Tuesday, March 3, that a “very little” $11 million out of the $26 million total has already been spent on the Arlington location.

During the hearing, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) asked Joseph Moore, USCIS Chief Financial Officer, “How much has been expended to date on the Crystal City amnesty processing center?”

“Senator, we’ve spent very little in total,” Moore claimed. “We’ve spent, preparing the program, we’ve spent $11 million in total. That includes the, uh, the lease for the Crystal City facility, which was around $7 million.”

“USCIS is assessing, given that we’ve spent 90 days trying to, uh, working very diligently to build the capacity in that center to process Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and LPR requests, and we’re only two weeks or so into an injunction, we are at a point where we’re reassessing whether … the extent to which that center will relieve some of the pressures that we see from both a facility standpoint and a workload standpoint at our other centers,” Renaud said, adding that “the decision is ongoing” and that the “center remains empty the way we found it.”

The USCIS began advertising 1,000 new job openings to staff the Arlington facility on Dec. 1, where the “initial workload will include cases filed as a result of the executive actions on immigration announced on Nov. 20, 2014.”

Renaud told Congress that only two people had been hired to work at the Crystal City facility, but were reassigned following the court injunction.

Circumventing Congress, President Obama announced his unilateral DAPA program, along with plans to expand the already-existing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA), last November.

The DAPA program would offer temporary amnesty to as many as 5 million illegal aliens, while also granting them the right to legally work in the United States and obtain Social Security Numbers.

The USCIS has estimated that as many as 3 million eligible DAPA recipients, roughly 60 percent of the total 5 million, will apply for the program within the first two years.
CNS News

Federal agencies made $125 billion in improper payments last year, including tax credits to people who didn't qualify, Medicare payments for treatments that might not be necessary and unemployment benefits for people who were actually working, said a government report released Monday.
FOX News

The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress has just released a report that chronicles nearly unimaginable waste in government money-into-toilet. The report cites that Federal agencies made at least $125 billion in improper payments last year. The level of improper payments has reached a new high. In addition to fraud, the errors included overpayments and underpayments, as well payments made without proper documentation. The errors were found in all branches of government, 22 federal agencies were error riddled but three programs were the worst offenders: Medicare, Medicaid and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Together, the three programs accounted for a little more than $93 billion in improper payments.

For example, Social Security has no death record for 6.5 million people who would be at least 112 years old, according to a report by the agency’s inspector general. Substantial benefits have been paid to persons who are defrauding the government by claiming benefits for deceased persons. Those SS accounts are still open and subject to fraud.

The Inspector General confirmed that illegal aliens were using deceased number holders’ names and SSNs to work, but U.S. Attorneys from the Holder/Obama Department of Justice in Arizona, Florida, and South Carolina have refused to prosecute.

Auditors found, nearly 3,900 Social Security numbers were run through the U.S. government’s E-Verify system for people more than a century old between 2008 and 2011. The result of these errors? The waste of millions of taxpayers’ dollars annually and the exposure of our citizens to identify theft. Plus it puts the incompetence or malfeasance of our government on display for all to view.

Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals had the most improper payments, at $46 billion. The report said many were caused by insufficient documentation for home health claims and errors on medical necessity forms for hospital patients.

The Earned Income Tax Credit provides payments to low-income families through the tax code. The program had nearly $18 billion in improper payments, for an error rate of more than 27 percent. Yep, that’s 27%, more than one in four is screwed up or is fraudulent.

This wasted taxpayer money was not spent securing our borders, it was not spent on national defense, and it was not spent contributing to a safety net for those in need. It was stolen because of governmental incompetence.

Just for the record it is worth noting that the Obama administration said reducing improper payments is a priority. But the level of improper payments has now reached a new high. It is worth noting that in the last year of Republican governance, 2006, improper payments amounted to about $40 billion. Compare that to last year’s improper payments under Democrat governance, at least $125 billion.

Friends, that is more than a 300% increase in improper payments. Couple that with the fact that in 2006, the last year of Republican governance, our national debt was @ $8.5 trillion, today it is @ $18.16 trillion. That is an increase of more than 200%. We can expect a national debt of about $20 trillion by the end of the Obama administration. A debt that your children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren may never be able to repay. One must wonder about the competence of Democrat governance.

WHL wrote:Bare bones??? You are kidding, right???

News Buzzard wrote:

WHL wrote:Bare bones??? You are kidding, right???

The ratio of government employees to population is the lowest it's been in almost 30 years:

News Buzzard wrote:That's what happens when you reduce the working force of government to bare bones, you lose all oversight. You can blame the Republicans and their sequester for that!

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee say they have found at least $5.7 billion in wasted ObamaCare spending from the last five years. Panel Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said his staff have tallied the costs of five programs that have failed or "added no value," from the dysfunctional HealthCare.gov website to the national sign-up navigator program. "That is $5.7 billion down the drain," Hatch said during a hearing Thursday to mark the fifth anniversary of ObamaCare's passage.

The federal government's HealthCare.gov, which broke down in the fall of 2013, has been one of the most criticized components of ObamaCare's rollout....
The Hill

It has been revealed that thousands of taxpayer dollars have been approved to pay for disability benefits of hundreds of people that never should have received a dime, and it was all done because of an accident.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) was approving some Puerto Ricans for disability benefits because they don’t speak English as their first language, but they all were residing in Puerto Rico — where Spanish is the predominant language."
madworldnews/com

"The inspector general noted that a nurse in Puerto Rico who speaks only Spanish could be considered “unskilled” under current Social Security standards."
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