{"id":17289,"date":"2025-04-12T13:45:37","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T13:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=17289"},"modified":"2025-04-12T13:45:37","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T13:45:37","slug":"elon-musks-proof-of-government-waste-is-in-the-pudding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=17289","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk&#8217;s &#8216;Proof&#8217; of Government Waste Is in the Pudding"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that the federal government loses&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gao.gov\/products\/gao-24-105833\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">hundreds of billions of dollars each year due to fraud<\/a>. Medicare-related fraud has permitted health care insurers to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/health\/healthcare\/medicare-health-insurance-diagnosis-payments-b4d99a5d\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">pocket $50 billion<\/a>&nbsp;in reimbursements for diseases that doctors never treated. Fraudsters collected an estimated $135 billion in fraudulent COVID-19 unemployment payments, and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/opinion\/congress-blog\/5130998-covid-era-fraud-statute-of-limitations\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">unless Congress acts<\/a>&nbsp;to extend the statute of limitations, this money will never be recouped by the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>National security funds are routinely misspent or disappeared. The Pentagon&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/defense\/4992913-pentagon-fails-7th-audit-in-a-row-but-says-progress-made\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">has failed seven audits in a row<\/a>&nbsp;and often can&#8217;t account for missing money; last year, the Defense Department admitted that it lost&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/us\/pentagon-finds-another-2-billion-accounting-errors-ukraine-aid-2024-07-25\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">$8.2 billion in Ukraine<\/a>. The federal government spent&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2014\/06\/19\/how-the-us-lost-billions-over-nine-years-in-iraq.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">$61 billion<\/a>&nbsp;rebuilding Iraq: 15 percent of the funds were misspent, and another 10 percent simply disappeared, according to government auditors. In Afghanistan, it&#8217;s much the same: The Taliban-controlled central bank&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/united-nations-cash-afghanistan-following-taliban-takeover\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">is a recipient of U.S. funds<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/02\/13\/elon-musks-proof-of-government-waste-is-in-the-pudding\">https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/02\/13\/elon-musks-proof-of-government-waste-is-in-the-pudding<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that the federal government loses hundreds of billions of dollars each year due to fraud. Medicare-related fraud has permitted health care insurers to pocket $50 billion in reimbursements for diseases that doctors never treated. Fraudsters collected an estimated $135 billion in fraudulent COVID-19 unemployment payments, and unless Congress acts to extend the statute of limitations, this money will never be recouped by the government.<\/p>\n<p>National security funds are routinely misspent or disappeared. The Pentagon has failed seven audits in a row and often can&#8217;t account for missing money; last year, the Defense Department admitted that it lost $8.2 billion in Ukraine. The federal government spent $61 billion rebuilding Iraq: 15 percent of the funds were misspent, and another 10 percent simply disappeared, according to government auditors. In Afghanistan, it&#8217;s much the same: The Taliban-controlled central bank is a recipient of U.S. funds.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/02\/13\/elon-musks-proof-of-government-waste-is-in-the-pudding\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[2131,1598,1193,279,1552],"class_list":["post-17289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-doge","tag-elon-musk","tag-government-spending","tag-spending","tag-waste"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17290,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17289\/revisions\/17290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}