Corruption And The Problem Of Scale

DOGE is finding an impressive amount of government corruption, fraud, and featherbedding networks in US Treasury payments.  Verily they are uncovering the Democrat-Progressive-NGO complex with their probe into USAID and Treasury spending.

In a single area of government spending, DOGE learned that $100 Billion (with a B) in entitlement payments were going out to people with no social security number or other identifiers attached to the payments. Treasury officials apparently stated that $50 Billion of that was outright fraud.  Yet the payments were made year after year. It is likely even more programs will show outright fraudulent transfers.

Now $50 Billion in fraud in a single program could be dismissed as just a rounding error in the US Treasury's annual spending of over 6 Trillion dollars. 

And therein lies the problem.  When $50 Billion in fraudulent spending in entitlement programs is just considered a rounding error, you've lost the plot.

 $50 billion is the equivalent of a an entire lifetime of income tax payments by 153,581 Americans. Every dollar in income taxes paid for their entire lives, wasted on fraud in a single program - in one year - every year.

This $50 Billion in spending isn't just a political disagreement over priorities or funding Democrat's friends and buddies in NGOs or throwing money at SPPL (Stuff Progressive People Like). It is an outright transfer of payments to fraudulent recipients.

One should note that $50 Billion is higher than the entire GDP in 112 countries!  

If the fraudulent payments were a country's GDP, the Country of Entitlement Fraudlandia with a GDP of $50 Billion has a GDP equivalent to 14 Haitis, and handily would beat out Bangladesh, Romania, Nigeria, Ukraine, and Morrocco in world rankings at 51st in the world.

The $50 Billion received by Entitlement Fraudlandia is far more than the amount of aid sent so far to North Carolina after Hurricane Helena, which is, depending on what source you look at as a clear answer is interestingly hard to find, anywhere from 3 billion to up to 9 billion total in the latest round of aid.

Even worse, a General Accounting Office report from late April estimated outright fraudulent spending by the Federal Government to be  233 Billion to $521 Billion each year.

That would make The Nation of US Spending Fraudlandia have a greater GDP than India and it would be a Country with the 11th highest GDP in the entire World.

Again, that's just from outright fraud, not even touching cutting what are arguably legitimate, while still being  rather objectionable, payments that are being made on rather questionable spending priorities and to reinforce the Democrat-Progressive NGO complex.