A few days back, we revealed the $200 billion scandal inside the Federal Communication Commission or the FCC. We said how the incoming Department of Government Efficiency or the DOGE must rein in FCC’s spending or dissolve it altogether. Today, we are revealing another scam, much bigger and carried out right under Biden’s nose.
Okay, here we go: The Biden White House spent nearly a trillion dollars under a category called improper or unaccounted federal payments. This is insane, unbelievable! A staggering amount of $926 billion was spent over the last four years. The amount is almost equal to the $962 billion that Obama spent in his eight years.
Shockingly, these numbers only cover about 68 federal programs, though the government runs over 2,000 programs in total.
To put this into perspective, $926 billion is over $7,000 for every household in the U.S. That’s like seven months of groceries for a family of four or three average mortgage payments.
Let’s understand what these improper payments are.
Improper payments occur happen money goes to the wrong person or for the wrong amount. These transactions don’t just cost money—they point to deeper problems with government spending.
In this regard, the Trump administration 1.0 was not efficient either. Trump 1.0 spent $673 billion in improper payments. Over the last four years, this wasteful expenditure grew by 38 per cent.
Despite the high cost, there’s been little focus on fixing the issue. In fact, agencies with growing improper payment rates often get larger budgets. For instance, over a quarter of the programs that report improper payments had error rates of 10% or more this year.
A large chunk of these improper payments comes from health insurance programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. This year alone, these programs paid out $87 billion incorrectly. That’s enough to cover health insurance for 9.7 million people or 3.4 million families in the US
So, why does this keep happening?
One major reason is that agencies often fail to verify whether someone is eligible for the money they receive. For example, it can be hard to confirm if a person claiming child benefits, like taxation claims or food stamps, actually lived with the child for the required time. Agencies could use better methods, like cross-checking addresses for tax and school lunch benefits or delaying child tax claims until after April 15 to verify details. However, many agencies don’t use the data they already have, ignore recommendations from inspectors, or even fail to follow fraud prevention laws.
Take the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Restaurant Revitalization Fund as an example. The SBA gave out 30.3% of its payments—$8.7 billion—improperly. This happened because the agency ignored protocols, including awarding $552 million to 901 applicants flagged for issues and giving $7.9 billion to 63,000 applicants who hadn’t passed IRS checks.
SBA is fraud, shut down this agency as soon as possible. This is completely rotten.
While Congress has tried to address this problem, their efforts have been ineffective. Now, the DOGE, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, will have to tackle this massive problem. Ramaswamy has publicly criticized agencies like the SBA for ignoring fraud prevention measures. He believes DOGE could save up to $1 trillion over 10 years by addressing these issues.
Still, improper payments are just one symptom of excessive government spending. The federal government spent $3.8 trillion on transfer payments last year, or $29,000 per household. To truly solve the problem, DOGE must work through day and through night, and show these lazy, corrupt bureaucrats the exit door.
