Now It Is HUD's Turn To Waste Taxpayer Wealth

Many times we have gone through various Federal government organizations and how they continually waste taxpayer wealth, year in and year out. These recurring sources of spending waste include, but are not limited to, the following government entities and programs:

• Annual Medicare waste estimate: $70 - $90 billion
• Annual Medicaid waste estimate: $40 - $60 billion
• Annual Social Security waste estimate: $100 - $125 billion
• Annual IRS tax evasion estimate: $385 billion
• Annual IRS identify theft income tax filing fraud: billions
• Annual unemployment benefits waste: $19 billion

These are just a sample of the wasteful spending and criminal fraud that the political class and the Federal government perpetuates on us every year. Not to be outdone, a new audit report shows that the Federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) organization can join the list of government entities that can also lose over a billion dollars a year.

A Moneynews report from September 21, 2012 identified the following disgrace from HUD, courtesy of the organization's inspector general's analysis:

• HUD's Pre-Foreclosure Sale Program was supposed to save struggling homeowners from foreclosure.
• However, the Federal government might have paid more than $1 billion to homeowners who didn't qualify for it.
• A sample of claims from the program found that there were problems with more than 75% of the sampled claims.
• The inspector general audit estimated that HUD paid $1.06 billion in fraudulent claims for 11,693 pre-foreclosure sales that did not meet requirements of the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), which runs the program.
• The  Pre-foreclosure Sale Program requirements required that 1) homeowners must be facing an unavoidable financial crisis, 2) live in the home and 3) show they lack income to make monthly mortgage payments. However, the inspector general audit found that some home owners had enough savings for seven to nine months of mortgage payments, many applicants had no unavoidable financial hardship, others were not owner-occupied homes, other applicants had no income verification, and mortgage lenders failed to verify expenses for 60% of the sampled claims.
• As a result of this gross mishandling of the program's specifications and the related taxpayer payouts on claims, the inspector general concluded: "HUD did not have adequate controls to enforce the program requirements, and the requirements were not well-written. HUD did not adequately monitor and enforce the program requirements."
• As result of this incompetence, the article quotes government sources that the entire FHA mortgage effort "will need a government bailout because of poor risk management and its booming loan volumes. Its capital reserves have fallen below its mandated amount of 2 percent of its portfolio."

Great, does anyone in the Federal government know how to do their jobs without screwing up any situation more than before they began? The Federal government has been doing these types of functions for decades, if not centuries, but does no one in Washington know how to run anything efficiently and effectively? Who is responsible for wasting hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars every year and why have they not been fired for gross incompetence? And a screwup rate of over 75% is certainly gross.

Two steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" are needed in order to finally bring some competence to Washington:

1. Step 34 would remove Congressional members from their committee posts for such dereliction of duty and the wasting of hundreds of billions of dollars every year. In this instance, politicians sitting  on the committees overseeing HUD operations might be removed for not ensuring that HUD procedures were followed and over a billion dollars wasted. Step 34 proposes some processes that could be used to implement such accountability measures.
2. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Washington politicians. It is obvious that those serving in Congress are part of the problem since they have been unable to get government to function effectively and efficiently. How much worse could it get to get new people in office, people who would not tolerate a 75% error rate from government entities?

The final step that is needed is to get people into office that would actually fire government bureaucracts who do not do their job effectively. In the private sector, if your screwup rate is over 75%, you will not be in that job very long. Same principle should apply to government jobs, screwup like you have been doing and get fired.

I would bet that if a few high ranking bureaucrats actually got fired for wasting taxpayer wealth, the operating efficiency of government would increase dramatically as others finally started dong their job. Not everyone should get a chance to waste taxpayer wealth, from Medicare to HUD, it must stop.


We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of our times.

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http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
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http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment