Examples of waste for

Jose Alegria-Garcia, an illegal alien from El Salvador who has been in the United States illegally for more than 30 years, has been sentenced to serve 29 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to unlawfully using a Social Security number, falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen and stealing the identity of a U.S. citizen.

The victim, a U.S. national living in New York, stated that he found it difficult to obtain the benefits he was entitled to through Social Security because government records indicated that he was working in Alaska. In fact, Alegria-Garcia was working in Alaska, having stolen the victim’s identity.”

The SSA Office of Inspector General has also noted that the Social Security Administration has a long-term problem with W-2s filed by employers on which the name and Social Security Number do not match.

Last November, the OIG issued its fiscal 2014 “Statement on the Social Security Administration’s Major Management and Performance Challenges.” It said that from 2003 to 2012 employers submitted 89.7 million no-match W-2s. The SSA accounts for these in what it calls the “Earnings Suspense File.”

“Per the latest available data, the ESF had accumulated over $1.2 trillion in wages and 333 million wage items for Tax Years 1937 through 2012. In Tax Year 2012 alone, SSA posted 6.9 million wage items, representing $71 billion, to the ESF. From Tax Years 2003 to 2012, the ESF grew by approximately $749 billion in wages and 89.7 million wage items, representing about 62 percent of the total wages and 26 percent of the total wage items.”
CNS News

An inspector general (IG) investigation found that employees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) earning $120,000 a year were watching pornography on the job and were put on paid administrative leave for almost a year before anybody tried to fire them.

“Over the past two years, the EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) has conducted investigations of multiple cases of serious misconduct carried out by EPA employees,” explained the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at a hearing on EPA mismanagement Thursday. There are continued problems with EPA employees who watch pornography at work,” said Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah)..."
CNS

WHL wrote:Yes, it does.

But government can do things better than we can.  Just ask NB.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) paid individuals acting as representatives for disabled beneficiaries nearly $50 million even though they were dead.

An audit from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) is just the latest example of the SSA’s inability to figure out who on their rolls is still alive.

The audit focused on “representative payees,” or a person who manages another’s finances due to mental or physical limitations. The OIG found that many payees acting on behalf of disability beneficiaries had died.

“SSA did not ensure new representative payees were selected when current payees died,” the OIG said. “Based on our sample results, we estimated 2,548 deceased payees received approximately $46.8 million in [Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance] OASDI benefits and [Supplemental Security Income] SSI payments.”

The total amount estimated to be “managed by deceased payees” was $46,886,205.

The majority of payments were made to dead payees who controlled payments to OASDI recipients, which receive an average $1,182.24 per month.

The OIG based its results on a sample of 200 representative payees, finding that 109 were deceased. The average total benefit payment to deceased payees was $15,762. Many received payments more than 2 years after their death.

The SSA is more likely to continue payments to dead payees than to cut them off, according to the OIG estimates. A total of 2,548 deceased payees received payments, while only 2,014 payees were not issued benefit funds after their death.

Though the OIG said a majority of payments to the dead did not show signs of fraud, the report highlights continuing problems with the SSA’s record keeping methods.

Of the 2,014 dead payees who did not receive funds after their death, 1,715 remained on the SSA’s Master Beneficiary Record (MBR) or Supplemental Security Records (SSR) databases. “Incorrect Social Security numbers (SSN) in SSA’s files compromises SSA’s computer matching efforts,” the OIG said.

The agency has massive amounts of incorrect SSNs on file. Earlier this year the OIG reported that the SSA has 6.5 million Social Security Numbers for 112-year-olds on file, allowing for “thousands of instances of potential identity theft.” There are only roughly 35 people aged 112 years or older living worldwide.

SSA has a habit of paying the dead. The OIG identified that the agency paid at least 740 dead people $17.1 million in benefits between 2013 and 2015, although benefit payments to the dead is likely much higher. Another audit found that SSA paid $3 million to 14 dead Californians who had died in the 1980s.

Payment to representative payees is another area where taxpayer funding goes to the deceased. The SSA is responsible for choosing a new person to manage a beneficiary’s payments when a payee dies. Most of the time the agency was able to determine the person had died soon after their death, but then unable to replace the payee and shut off payments.

“Although SSA knew about the death of payees in most cases within [one] month it took the agency more than 12 months to replace the deceased payees in 60 percent of the case in which a deceased payee was issued funds,” the OIG said.

Though 84 out of the 109 deceased payees in the audit’s sample were identified as dead within one month, 34 still received benefit payments for more than two years after their death.

The findings were based on a review of SSA records between July 2014 and March 2015. Some payees had died as early as February 2000.

The problem of paying dead representatives has persisted for decades. The OIG issued audits in 1999 and 2006, when the SSA agreed with recommendations to “upgrade systems to ensure deceased payees are identified and replaced in a timely manner.”

Nearly a decade later, the SSA said they agreed with the audit’s findings.

“We are committed to ensuring the accuracy of the benefits we pay individuals responsible for managing beneficiary payments,” said Frank Cristaudo, counselor to the SSA commissioner. “As part of our efforts to improve the accuracy of our records, we are currently in a multi-year effort to improve our death report processing and make the Numident our official repository for death information going forward.”

“Upon completion, the redesign will improve the availability of death information to all of our systems, including Title II, Title XVI, and the Representative Payee System,” he said. “These enhancements should prevent the occurrence of any future cases described in this audit prospectively.”
Washington Free Beacon

When not pleading poverty, the Department of Veterans Affairs can be awfully careless with its money.

The latest example: In 2011, the VA set $43.1 million aside to produce brochures informing veterans about their benefits, then forgot about it. The money went unspent for three years and now might be lost for good.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...

The FBI says its background-check system failed, allowing the man who opened fire inside a South Carolina church last month to purchase the gun he used in the rampage.

Speaking to a small group of reporters in Washington today, FBI Director James Comey said 21-year-old Dylann Roof of Lexington, South Carolina, should not have been able to buy the weapon.
ABC News

Obama’s plan to raise and train an army of Syrian rebels to take on ISIS has become yet another strategic foreign policy embarrassment, this one costing American taxpayers $500 million.

Only 60 Syrian fighters volunteered to receive training from the US Army, far short of an effective force to fight ISIS. The initial plan was to train 5,400 troops. Most likely the Syrian rebels are well aware of Obama’s previous actions in the Middle East, but since Iran has sided with the Assad regime, who is going to protect them and their families once the Iranians get the bomb?
Coach is Right

Contractors in Argentina and China were given "direct access to every row of data in every database" when they were hired by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to manage the personnel records of more than 14 million federal employees, a federal consultant told ArsTechnica.

The massive breach of OPM's database — made public by the Obama administration this month — prompted speculation over why the agency hadn't encrypted its systems, which contain the sensitive security clearance and background information for intelligence and military personnel.

Encryption, however, according to ArsTechnica, would not have helped in this case because administrators responsible for managing these records had root access to the system, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity Dr. Andy Ozment testified yesterday at a two-hour hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...

WHL wrote:He is an expert at wasting our money!!

The Obama administration on Wednesday announced a program to connect thousands of public housing residents across the nation to the Internet at low prices or free, part of a broader effort to close the so-called digital divide and help low-income Americans succeed in a technology-driven society.
Appearing at a school in Durant, Okla., in the heart of the Choctaw Nation, where 32 percent of children live in poverty, Mr. Obama said it was unacceptable for young people not to have access to the same technological resources in their homes that their wealthier counterparts do.