Behind The Mic With Joe Mathieu: Report Finds Duplicate Government Spending
BOSTON (CBS) – This is not a story about $1,000 toilet seats but it's no less egregious - a new report showing our government wasting tens of billions of dollars on federal programs.
Details will are being revealed in a hearing today on Capitol Hill.
The non-partisan Government Accountability Office has found more than two-dozen instances where programs overlap or are somehow fragmented. So we're basically paying for the same thing twice. Or three times. Or even more.
USA Today got an early look at the report which finds it takes ten different offices in the Department of Health and Human services to run programs fighting aids in minority communities
Eight agencies at the Department of Defense are looking for prisoners of war and those missing in action.
Most people agree these are important programs. But that does not mean we need to overpay for them. And Congress is supposed to use this information to help spend our money more efficiently.
Some critics doubt that will actually happen. And who could blame them. This report is now in its fourth year but Congress has only acted on about half of the GAO's recommendations.
For what it's worth President Obama's budget for next year proposes cutting or consolidating 136 programs. But as we've reported that budget is not expected to see the light of day, as there's an existing spending agreement for 2015.
Follow Joe on Twitter @joemathieuwbz
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