Thread by @usacsmret

"It's the largest extravaganza of taxpayer abuse going on right now in the history of our country," says @everydimeonline dailysign.al/2kZqXZq via @LRacheldG @DailySignal

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal There’s a reason why the last week of the fiscal year is called “Christmas in September” for federal contractors. It’s the largest extravaganza of taxpayer abuse going on right now in the history of our country.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal This is a period where the agencies are spending down their budgets this year, so they’ll get an appropriation from Congress that’s the same or larger next year, it’s called “use it or lose it” spending.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal It’s a spending binge and some agencies, Rachel, are going to spend $1 out of every $5 in contracting on the year and they’ll spend it this week and the final week of the year.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal Last year, the federal agency spent a half billion dollars in the month of September buying vehicles. We just pulled the numbers from the first two weeks of September of this year and already $60 million was spent by the federal agencies on passenger motor vehicles.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal In our oversight report last year, we found that the Pentagon spent $4.6 million buying lobster tail and snow crab. This made national news. It was big news, it ran on all the platforms. It was a nonpartisan story, it ran on Fox News, it ran on CNN, it ran on the New York Post

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal We’ve seen here in September already that the DOD is purchasing lobster tail and snow crab again. Now we still have two weeks left so they could definitely come in with a big order.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal What we have found is that the procurement departments at these major agencies, they’ve staffed up in anticipation of having to blow these contracts out the door before the fiscal year closes.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal We find evidence that the agencies are now even open on the weekends this year. They’ve scheduled work days of 12- and 13-hour days. Last year, the fiscal year actually ended on the weekend.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal This year, Sept. 30 is actually during the week, so they’re not going to be closed. They’re going to be open, they’re going to be working longer hours with more staffers and more money to spend.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal They’ve even eliminated the limits. They raised the limits on credit cards, so they can use their credit cards now for up to $10,000 per transaction, rather than $3,500. The limits have come off, money is flowing, it is definitely Christmas in September for federal contractors.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal I think the most waste is going to be in the largest agencies, which just stands to reason. So I think the most waste is over at the Pentagon.

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@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal You know, the Pentagon buried an oversight report a couple of years ago in 2015 and they found that there was $125 billion a year in bureaucratic waste and there’s probably even more than that.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal Look, the Grace Report back in the 1980s under President Reagan said, “One out of every three federal dollars spent is wasted.” It’s either taxpayer abuse or spent on duplicative services.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal And I don’t think anyone believes that the budget is more honed today than what it was 30 years ago. I think we’ve had a couple of decades of spending on steroids.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal One of easiest ones, and, again, it’s nonpartisan, we advocate putting in basic in-house financial accounting controls. Incredibly, since 2004, the 20 largest federal agencies admit to $1.4 trillion worth of improper payments.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal We’ve done oversight on that, and what we found was even last year there was $1 billion of federal payments paid to dead people.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal These were improper payments paid to people that had already filed a federal death certificate, but payments continued to flow, like Social Security payments and pension payments and Medicaid and Medicare payments.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal Think about this: The Department of Education, they admit last year to $6 billion of improperly paid Pell Grants and student loans, it’s 8% of all Pell Grants that are improperly paid and 4% of all student loans.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal Even the Small Business Administration lent $1 billion last year that they say they should not have lent.
Basic in-house financial accounting controls are missing and they’re even missing at the IRS. The IRS is one of the most egregious offenders of improper payments.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal Yes, the Internal Revenue Service, they administer the earned income tax credit and every year they admit to $18 billion, one out of every $4 in that program, is improperly paid out.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal We haven’t done “use it or lose it” analysis in the states, only at the federal level. But I can tell you the state where we’re headquartered, where OpenTheBooks.com is headquartered, is in Illinois, and Illinois is the Super Bowl of corruption.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal “It’s all legal in Illinois.” These are legalized money laundering schemes. And in Illinois, one of the biggest schemes that we face as a state, and it’s actually bankrupting our state, is the level of public employee salary and pensions.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal In Illinois, incredibly, there’s nearly 100,000 public employees on salaries or pension payouts in retirement that exceed six figures a year, that exceed $100,000 a year.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal We’ve got 600 pension plans and Moody’s estimates the longterm unfunded liability of those plans is a quarter-trillion dollars and there’s only 13 million people in the state.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal That means for every man, woman, and child in the state of Illinois, there’s $20,000 of unfunded liability. A family of four, your share of the Illinois pension crisis is $80,000. That’s never being paid back, and those programs, those pension plans, they’re going to go bust.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal We’ve got $1 trillion of where the spending exceeds the revenue, $1 trillion of budget deficit in a $22 trillion national debt. So when we look at “use it or lose it” spending from last year, we found a half-million dollars to redecorate in the federal agencies.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal You know, the Department of Defense spent $10,000 on a club leather chair. We found $300,000 spent on booze at the Department of Defense and the State Department purchasing beer, wine, and whiskey. We found $1 billion to load the gun lockers.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal Everybody can probably support the Pentagon purchasing guns and bombs. But where it gets a little dicey is when you have your non-military, non-law enforcement agencies like the Office of Personnel Management,...

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal ....the Small Business Administration, the EPA, Health and Human Services, the IRS, and Veterans Affairs purchasing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of guns and ammunition.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal And we see that again in this year’s numbers: $17,000 went to purchase bullets for the equivalent over at the VA, for their police force of AR-15s. We found out last year $10 million was spent on workout equipment and recreation equipment, including $12,000 on a foosball table.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal We found a half-million dollars spent on self promotion, PR, public opinion research and communication and advertising in the final month of the fiscal year. And of course, we had that $300 million spent on vehicles.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal Just come to OpenTheBooks.com and … and become a subscriber or download our free app for Apple and Android, it’s very innovative. It’s called Open the Books—free in the Apple Store and the Google Play Store.

@everydimeonline @LRacheldG @DailySignal What you have is 22 million public employees salaries, at every level, right in your own ZIP code, in your own neighborhood. Finally, you can look up and you can see who, by name, works for which government agency, school district, municipality, and how much they make.