June, 2017, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Massive Government Spending Waste and Massive California Common Sense Waste

As we do every month, we review the latest idiocy, lunacy, ineptness, and general insanity from the American political class. We are getting started as little late this month since we needed to review the latest global warming.climate change insanity from the likes of Al Gore, culminating in our review of the 26 reasons why it was appropriate and necessary for Trump to pull us out of the Paris Climate Agreement:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2017/06/june-2017-part-4-i-am-global-warming.html

But let’s quickly get into this month’s political class insanity because over the past month or so there has been a lot of it was Washington implodes into a useless pile of incompetence:

1) Susan Jones, writing for the CNS website on May 18, 2017, pointed out the vast amount of fraud and waste that goes on everyday within the Federal government, based on the latest investigation into such waste, this one done by the Comptroller General:

• The report and research from the Comptroller General found that the Federal government made a whopping $144 billion in improper payments just in 2016.
• The Comptroller told a Senate Budget Committee hearing that improper payments over the years easily added up to more than a trillion dollars.
• In his opening statement Inspector General Dodaro stated that, “These are payments that should not have been made or were made in the wrong amounts.” 
• And the problem is getting worse since he found that improper payments in 2014 were $125 billion, $137 billion in 20915, and now $144 billion in 2016.
• These improper payments occurred in 112 Federal government programs across 22 Federal government organizations.
• The worst news is that these 112 programs and 22 organizations do not cover the entire Federal government, meaning that more than $144 billion was likely wasted just in 2016.
• His findings did not include the food stamp program,which we know is infected with criminal fraud and wasteful spending, the Defense Department which we also know is so screwed up that trained auditors cannot figure out the accounting mess that the Pentagon operates, and other Federal agencies and programs.
• Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security account for about 75% of the $144 billion.

What a disgraceful waste of taxpayer wealth. We have previously reported that every year about 140 million American file an income tax return. If the Washington political class and Federal government bureaucrats were doing their job, than each one of those taxpayer would theoretically get an additional $1,000 a year tax refund. What would you do if someone gave you a tax free $1,000 every year? 

2) Speaking of Medicare screwups, consider a recent Wall Street Journal article by Melanie Evans:

• A recent inspector general report found that Medicare improperly paid out $729 million to doctors and others over a three year period.
• The bad payments went to people who claimed they deserved bonus Medicare payments under a Medicare program but who lacked proof or failed to meet the criteria for the bonus payments.
• The audit estimated that a whopping 12% of the payments paid out under the specified bonus program were done in error, an unacceptable level of ineptness.
• Medicare officials said that they would try to recoup the misspent funds.

Just one example where hundreds of millions of dollars are improperly spent by the Feds, how many other dozens or hundreds of programs are doing the same thing that have not been uncovered yet?

3) How about a little state political class insanity? And of course, what is the best state for political class insanity? California. Earlier this month we reported on how millions of people have been leaving California over the years to get away from the high taxes,onerous regulations, stupid laws, and destruction of personal freedom in that state. 

Despite the growing evidence that they are not doing a good job, given the ever growing and huge state government debt load and the millions of people leaving the state, two state politicians have decided they want healthcare in California to be a single payer system where the government controls every aspect of health care. No insurance companies involved at all, just the state government trying to administer to the health care needs of every resident.

Consider the many insanity angles of this stupidity:

• The initial estimate of the cost of a state run single payer system is $400 billion a year.
• Given that not a single government program has ever come in under the initial estimate and budget, I think we can safely assume that the $400 billion annual cost is a lowball estimate.
• But let’s stay with that estimate and the reality that there are over 39 million people living in California today.
• Thus, if we simply divide the annual cost by the number of people in the state, the average cost every year for health care for every California, men, women, and children, would be a whopping $10,000+ per person.
• Thus, a typical four person family would be paying over $40,000 a year for health care and insurance, which, remember is a low ball estimate.

Now, a liberal would probably claim that the rich and businesses should have their taxes raised to pay for such high state sponsored healthcare costs but you can be sure that very quickly businesses and the wealthy would be leaving California in droves, not wanting to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year to support a massive and likely ineffective state government bureaucracy.

Furthermore, as costs spiraled upwards and out of control, I am sure that the state bureaucrats and politicians would try to save this disaster by continually reducing the amount of money that is paid out to doctors and other health professionals, which would likely result in more and more doctors leaving the state for other parts of the country where they can make a better living.

Thus, the outward migration of people, doctors, and businesses would accelerate under such a stupid plan, a plan that is likely to cost more than $400 billion a year. You cannot fix stupid, especially California political stupid.

That will do it for today’s political class insanity: the Federal government continues to lose billions and billions of dollars every year to incompetence and criminal fraud and California state politicians cannot do simple math or exhibit any common sense. More insanity to follow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

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http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w