A Drop Here, A Drop There

[Geee]

American Spectator:

Suggest that getting rid of waste in a particular government program would result in a savings of X millions of dollars and the typical Washington green eyeshade type (or Democrat lawmaker, if it doesn't fit his agenda) will scoff that it's but "a drop in the bucket" --hardly worth fooling with. They forget the late Senator Everett Dirksen's dictum, "A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money."

The latest case involves the revelation that the Internal Revenue Service paid out half-a-billion dollars to first-time home buyers who weren't. You'll recall that this was part of the Obama 2009 "economic recovery" program, designed to jump-start home sales. First-time buyers would get credits of up to $8,000. Congress sweetened the pot by giving $6,500 to current owners who traded up to a new home.

The IRS's inspector general recently reported finding that some credits went to prison inmates, to people who did not buy homes and others who bought before the credit program became law. In all, the IRS paid our $29 billion to more than four million people. To its credit, it denied the claims of more than 400,000. That the program did not make an appreciable difference in the housing market is not, of course, the fault of the IRS, but of incorrect policy planning of the Obama Administration and its Congressional allies. Nevertheless, tighter vetting of claims could have saved several bucketsful of taxpayer funds.

[Sanguine]

Obviously, getting rid of fraud and waste is not a priority.