COMMENTARY | We all want to get rid of waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement in the federal government, but this is not the way to do it, argues one observer.
There are at least two things that everyone around the country agrees on: there’s waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government—and that we ought to do everything we can to root it out. And in rooting it out, there are two more things we can agree on.
The war on unholy “waste, fraud, abuse” trio has been around for a very long time. Ronald Reagan, after all, launched his own proto-DOGE in 1982 with the goal of “improving management and reducing costs.” Second, there’s always been a mysticism around this trinity, which assumes it could be made to disappear like a lion in a Las Vegas show, by waiving a magic wand. Ahh, if only it were that easy.
In fact, as the Government Accountability Office makes clear in its new high-risk report on federal programs most prone to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, we certainly could save billions of dollars. Past work on GAO’s checklist has saved $759 billion, with $84 billion recouped in just the last two years. There are billions more we could take back.
That’s what the Trump administration wants. It’s the job that DOGE has. It’s the key to reassuring taxpayers that their hard-earned tax money isn’t going to waste. But what DOGE is doing is precisely the wrong way to get there.
GAO’s new report lays out the facts in the 323 pages of its new report. Cutting waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement requires three “C’s”—coordination (mentioned 33 times in the report), capacity (at 68 times), and capital (human capital, that is, with 27 mentions).
Editor’s Note: To cover this key report –what DOGE is doing way wrong, I’ve attached several documents to this post:
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