Jodey Arrington: “I am grateful to my appropriator colleagues for rightsizing the bureaucracy and reining in the wasteful and unnecessary…”

“I am grateful to my appropriator colleagues for rightsizing the bureaucracy and reining in the wasteful and unnecessary spending after this government grew 40 percent during COVID. The taxpayers deserve fiduciaries who spend their money like it was our money. That is really the prevailing philosophy we should all embrace. I, again, commend the appropriators for the painstaking efforts to rein this in. I support the bill, but I highlight in an amendment one of the most egregious and largest wasteful spending categories, and that is improper payments. The Federal Government wastefully and fraudulently spends taxpayer money at an alarming rate. In 2021, it was almost $300 billion. Last year, it was $245 billion. Mr. Chairman, that is money you could spend on a soldier or a sailor or on a safety net or infrastructure. It is going nowhere. It is larger than the Departments of Energy, Commerce, and Justice. It is a third of our defense spending. The VA is not the only problem. It is pervasive. At the VA, there is a long-term care category that has an improper payment rate of 47 percent. Think about that. Almost 50 cents on every dollar is wasted in this program. It is unconscionable, Mr. Chairman. If you look across the board, the earned income tax credit, 30 cents on every dollar wasted, $18 billion. The Medicaid program wasted $80 billion last year. The child tax credit wasted $5 billion. The list goes on.…”