This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Sept. 14, 2011 - WASHINGTON - Eliminating fraud, waste and abuse -- it's a predictable and periodic call by presidents, lawmakers and candidates who want painless ways to cut federal spending. But waste-fighting efforts over the years have seldom met their goals.
On Wednesday, the White House and lawmakers renewed the perennial battle, with Vice President Joe Biden billing himself as the "sheriff" in policing government waste; U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., corralling former wrangler and actor Wilford Brimley to back an effort to require high-tech Medicare ID cards to stop fraud; and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., grilling a Pentagon nominee about wasteful military contracts.
"If we're going to spur jobs and economic growth and restore long-term fiscal solvency, we need to make sure hard-earned tax dollars don't go to waste," said Biden, who leads the administration's Campaign to Cut Waste, which is targeting billions of dollars in wasteful or fraudulent spending.
On Wednesday Biden convened eight Cabinet members to outline the waste targets. Among them were Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The most ambitious plan is an ongoing campaign to audit Medicaid contractors and root out improper payments to fraudulent contractors and beneficiaries. About $670 million has been recovered so far this year; the goal is to find $2.1 billion in fraudulent payments.
Another target is federal unemployment insurance payments, more than 10 percent of which are improperly sent to people who either lied on their applications or whose eligibility has expired. Solis announced plans to give about $190 million in grants to states so that they can more accurately track the employment status of recipients. That would allow the federal government to hold states more accountable for improper payments.
Biden said that, under a government-wide initiative to cut wasteful spending, federal agencies and departments are required to reduce their office supply costs, travel budgets and subscriptions to publications.
Kirk and Allies Target Medicare Fraud
Shortly before Biden renewed his war on waste, Kirk assembled a bipartisan group of lawmakers at the Capitol to announce a legislative effort to require the use of "smart-card" technology in new Medicare ID cards designed to reduce fraud in the system.
"By removing a senior's Social Security number from the front of the card and including security upgrades .... this 'secure Medicare common access card' will also help end Medicare's 'pay, then chase' policy that allows so much fraud and abuse," Kirk said.
Kirk was joined at the news conference by other backers of the bill, including Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, as well as by the burly, moustachioed Brimley, an activist for seniors who said he liked the idea of secure Medicare cards.
The expensive but efficient high-tech ID cards -- which would replace the current low-tech Medicare cards that lead to fraud, in part, because they list the holder's Social Security number -- are being pushed by a group of digital-security firms who call themselves the "Secure ID Coalition." Kirk's legislation, which will be suggested to the deficit-reduction "super committee" and possibly offered as an amendment to a Medicare bill, calls for spending about $29 million to manufacture and distribute the new cards to seniors under a pilot program in five U.S. regions.
Kirk and other backers contend that the potential savings in Medicare fraud will be worth the cost of producing and distributing the smart cards, which would be modeled on the ID cards now used by members of the U.S. military. Medicare fraud is assessed by a Government Accountability Office report as $48 billion a year, and estimated by other experts to top $60 billion.
"Medicare wastes $60 billion a year by making fraudulent payments," said Rep. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville, a backer of Kirk's legislation. "It's possible that we could save half of that just by using the [smart] Medicare card and verifying the recipient's identity, who the provider was, and the service that was provided."
Fraud, Waste in Pentagon Contracting
Aside from the big entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, the largest chunk of the federal budget goes to the Department of Defense. And numerous lawmakers are now targeting waste and fraud in Pentagon contracting.
Earlier this week, McCaskill, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, pressed the nominee for assistant defense secretary, Ashton B. Carter, with questions about wasteful and fraudulent spending on Pentagon contracts during his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill.
Last month, the U.S. Commission on Wartime Contracting reported that contracting waste and fraud have amounted to at least $31 billion -- and possibly as much as $60 billion -- during U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The waste resulted from ill-conceived projects, lax planning and oversight, weak performance by contractors, and corrupt behavior by a few contractors.
"It's important we figure out whether we're all on the same page going forward with the commission's work," McCaskill told Carter during the confirmation hearing. The Missouri senator said, "My job now is to hold you accountable to make the work of the Contracting Commission be real to our military."
McCaskill, who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's contracting oversight subcommittee, had worked with Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., to establish the contracting commission. At this week's hearing, she said she appreciated Carter's previous work, as a defense undersecretary, to identify wasteful spending, and added that he needed to take more steps to tighten oversight of Pentagon contracting.
"We have two projects on contracting, one is that contracting within the big Pentagon picture and the other is contingency contracting -- and they have different sets of problems," McCaskill said.
"The biggest problem with contingency contractors is the over-reliance on contractors in order to meet the mission and the supremacy of the mission in terms of shortcutting good practices and a culture that is all about that.... It's that culture where I think your leadership at the very top is absolutely essential."