Chris Chocola: “today I rise to offer an update from the Washington Waste Watch. Every year the Federal Government wastes billions of…”

“today I rise to offer an update from the Washington Waste Watch. Every year the Federal Government wastes billions of dollars as a result of overpayments of government agencies, misuse of government credit cards, abuse of the Federal entitlement programs, and the mismanagement of the Federal bureaucracy. The waste exists in every program in every agency, in every Department of the Federal Government. Mr. Speaker, let me share a few examples with you. Accounting errors prevented the Department of Agriculture from being able to account for $5 billion of its receipts and expenditures. The Department had no way of knowing where the money came from and where it had gone. The Department of Defense spent $41 million to develop a system to track its ammunition, but 8 years later no system had been created or was close to completion. Individuals defaulting on their student loans cost the Department of Education $4 billion in 1999 alone. An audit of the Department of Energy discovered that the Department had incorrectly listed $900 million in assets instead of liabilities and could not account for $56 million in missing funds. That is not all, Mr. Speaker. A 2000 audit of the Department of Labor discovered that 35 percent of the recipients of dislocated worker benefits were ineligible for the program. More than a quarter of the IRS's earned income credit payments were improper. The error rate is consistently between 27 and 32 percent of the total claims.”