Maybe I’m just old fashioned, or maybe I’m a bit stiff-necked, but I will never relent in my opposition to tax increases so long as the crowd in Washington is spending money on things that are not appropriate functions of the federal government.
But that’s just one obstacle that has to be overcome. I will also be dogmatic in my fight against higher taxes so long as there is massive waste, fraud, and abuse in federal programs.
And sometimes, to really get me upset, we have massive waste, fraud, and abuse for programs that are not legitimate functions of the federal government.
Here’s an excerpt from a story in Time magazine, but don’t read it if you have high blood pressure.
The Social Security Administration made $6.5 billion in overpayments to people not entitled to receive them in 2009, including $4 billion under a supplemental income program for the very poor, a government investigator said Tuesday. In all, about 10 percent of the payments made under the agency’s Supplemental Security Income program were improper, said Patrick P. O’Carroll Jr., the Social Security inspector general. …Throughout the federal government, improper payments totaled $125 billion last year, up from $110 billion in 2009, O’Carroll said. In 2009, only two other agencies — the Departments of Health and Human Services, and Labor — had more improper payments than Social Security, he said.
