Dan Coats: “this is week 14 of ``Waste of the Week.'' I have been coming to the floor for 14 weeks while the Senate has been in…”

“this is week 14 of ``Waste of the Week.'' I have been coming to the floor for 14 weeks while the Senate has been in session this year to talk about yet another waste which, if we can correct, can save the taxpayers a lot of money. In this case, we are talking about several billion dollars that have been determined by the inspector general of the Social Security Administration to have been spent improperly, accidently--by whatever reason--money that belongs to the taxpayers and falls under the category of waste. It is waste, and I give this inspector general and his staff great credit for doing something very creative and interesting. Actually, this is their job, delving into how an agency handles its business and, more importantly, how it handles the taxpayers' money. Whether you are looking at big business or big government, you find examples of cost cutting that can save the company and, in this case, save the taxpayer, a very significant amount of money. The inspector general decided to take a random sample of over 1,500 beneficiaries of the Social Security disability fund, and 44.5 percent of them received an overpayment at some point during the 10-year period that he studied. And based on this sample, the Social Security inspector general estimated that overpayments totaled about $16.8 billion over a period of time from October 2003 to February 2014, covering nearly 4 million beneficiaries.…”