Now The Veterans Affairs Bureaucracy Gets Their Chance To Waste Taxpayer Wealth

Over the past year or so we have been able to go through various Federal government entities and review their wasteful spending habits and total disregard for the taxes American taxpayers entrust to them. Not only is the wasteful spending a disgrace, the wasteful spending has not been contained to just a few government organizations:

• The Transportation Safety Administration has purchased over $180 million of airline screening equipment that is stored in a warehouse in its original packaging and will likely never be used.
• General Services Administration (GSA) employees spent $832,000 in order to treat themselves to a lavish Las Vegas party disguised as a conference.
• The State Department ignored its own in house criteria for building secure U.S. embassies and consulates around the world when it spent $80 million to build a consulate in northern Afghanistan and THEN realized it was indefensible from a terrorist attack since the construction violated State Department safety and anti-terrorist guidelines.
• The Navy spent about $300 million to build two supply ships almost to completion and then decided to spend $10 million to turn them into scrap metal without ever using them.
• In an audit survey of a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) mortgage program, the inspector general found that an unbelievable 75% of the customers registered in the program should never have received any taxpayer money since they did not pass the criteria that HUD itself has implemented.
• Medicare wastes anywhere from $70 to $90 billion a year due to waste, inefficiency, and criminal fraud.
• Medicaid wastes anywhere from $40 to $60 billion a year due to waste inefficiency, and criminal fraud.
• Social Security loses over $100 billion a year due to waste, inefficiency, and criminal fraud.
• The IRS admits that he fails to collect $385 billion a year from tax evaders, requiring honest taxpayers to pay more every year to cover the shortfall.
• The National Science Foundation gets about $7 billion a year of taxpayer wealth but in the recent past has wasted much of this wealth on nonsensical projects such as when did dogs become man's best friend, how to improve the quality of wine, why boys like to play with trucks and girls like to play with dolls, created a virtual recreation of the 1964/1965 World's Fair, a study to determine if playing Farmville helps adults develop and maintain relationships among others.

I am sure we could find a lot more examples but let’s just talk about the latest example of wasteful spending, this one courtesy of the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA). Their crisis of integrity was summarized in a Bloomberg news report from October 5, 2012:

• The department has more than tripled its expenditures for conferences and other such events over the past six years.
• Taxpayers have funded $295 million for the conferences and the department has paid for almost 1,600 overnight gatherings attended by at least 50 VA employees since 2005.
• The department’s conference spending has risen to $77.7 million in 2011, more than three times as much it spent since 2005.
• The amount has increased every year since 2006.
• John Sepulveda, the former Department of Veteran Affairs assistant secretary for human resources, has resigned amid the fallout from the spending scandal, specifically since he was a speaker at the two department human resources events held in 2011 at the Marriott International Inc. resort in Orlando, Fla.
• Sepulveda resigned a day before the Oct. 1 release of the inspector general’s report, a report that accused department employees of accepting inappropriate gifts including massages, Rockettes tickets, helicopter rides and limousine services and incurring $762,000 in unauthorized or wasteful expenses tied to the two gatherings.
• The inspector general estimated the two events cost more than $6 million, more than the $5 million that VA officials had estimated the actual costs were.
• These conferences were not even the most expensive VA conferences, according to documents Bloomberg obtained through a Freedom Of Information Act filing, a filing which was filed on April 25, took over five months to fulfill, and which violated the government‘s own guidelines for turning around FOIA requests.
• Three of the four most expensive VA events were for financial management training, not for directly addressing the many important needs of our veterans.
• The most expensive conference was a $6.3 million event in San Francisco in August, 2010 which was attended by 1,360 employees.
• The second most expensive conference was a $5.8 million financial-training conference in Nashville held in March-April 2011 attended by 1,480 employees and a similar event was held in Dallas in December 2010 that cost of $4.4 million, the fourth most expensive event. Again, so sad that millions of dollars are diverted to conferences that seem to have very little to do with directly aiding our veterans.
• The VA spent $4.5 million on an April 2010 medical conference in Las Vegas, the third most expensive event uncovered.
• Suspiciously, the department spent the most money on conferences in Las Vegas, where it has hosted more than 50 events at a cost of at least $27 million since 2005.
• Nashville came in second, with more than 30 conferences totaling at least $15 million.
• The VA records show that about 10 conferences were listed as costing zero dollars, which also raises some serious suspicions about faulty record keeping or cover ups.

Such a shame that millions and millions of dollars are wasted on Las Vegas conferences that appear to have very little direct impact on the service and care given to our veterans but which seem to take really good care of accountants.

But this should not be unexpected, given the horrible wasteful spending that we have documented and discussed across the entire Federal government bureaucracy. Wasteful use of  taxpayer wealth, inefficient and fraudulent in delivering services the American taxpayer has entrusted the Federal government to deliver.

Just another reason why no American, rich or poor, should be forced to pay an addtional penny in taxes until the Washington political class demonstrates that no tax money is wasted on conferences, lost to fraud, etc. That is why the next President, along with Congress, needs to delve into the nitty-gritty of the Federal bureaucracy to straighten out the wasteful spending habits that have become entrenched and refocus taxpayer wealth on the major issues of our times. Then, and only then, should anyone in Washington even think about a tax increase. 

Unfortunately, it is just those people, the current President and current members of Congress that have gotten us into this wasteful mess, it is unlikely they have the will, intelligence, or ability to get us out of their mess. Thus, two steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" need to be implemented to facilitate the correction of these injustices:

1. Step 1 would reduce Federal spending across the board, all Federal departments, by 10% a year for five years. This reduction in budget with a little leadership form the political class would force Federal departments to focus on their core jobs without Las Vegas conference being part of their agenda.
2. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federal politicians, one and done. These current career politicians have allowed the wasteful spending situation to get out of hand on their watch. They need to be replaced, from the President on down, with people that will rollup their sleeves, understand the nitty-gritty of government functions, and choke out the wasteful spending.

The American taxpayer and every veteran deserve nothing less.


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