Tax Day 2023: US wasted $247 billion in taxpayer dollars last year
Asher Notheis
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As tax season comes to a close, the news of billions of taxpayer dollars being wasted by the United States will likely not be well received.
The federal government reported roughly $247 billion in payment errors, such as overpayments or unnecessary payments, during fiscal 2022, the most recently completed fiscal year. Payment errors have been a long-standing problem — it is estimated that over the last 20 years, the U.S. has made almost $2.4 trillion in payment errors, according to the Government Accountability Office.
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“The government has just lost, as if you dropped it on the sidewalk, trillions and trillions of dollars over the last few decades,” said Richard Stern, a budget and spending expert from the Heritage Foundation, according to CNBC. “That is money that was stolen from hardworking Americans to just simply get wasted.”
Of the payment errors made in fiscal 2022, 78% were made in five program areas: Medicaid at $80.6 billion, Medicare at $46.8 billion, the Paycheck Protection Program at $29 billion, unemployment insurance at $18.9 billion, and earned income tax credit at $18.2 billion. In line with its previous examinations, the GAO found that some of these program areas have been consistently among those with the highest payment errors, including Medicaid, Medicare, and the earned income tax credit.
The waste of taxpayer dollars reported by GAO is in line with oversight reports from lawmakers such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who claimed in a report last year that the U.S. is wasting billions of dollars each year. Some of his claims in the report included U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spending roughly $17 million for unused hotel space intended for illegal immigrants between April and June 2021. Also, the Department of Defense spent roughly $28 million on forest-patterned “camouflage” uniforms to use in Afghanistan deserts.
“As the government spends, it runs up a deficit,” Stern said. “What happens is it’s sucking all the oxygen out of the room. It’s destroying investment. It’s mortgaging our futures. It’s slowing our growth. Today, the inflation you’re seeing is a large result of that.”
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The report on wasted money from 2022 comes as fears of a recession in the country continue to loom. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers put the odds of a recession beginning this year at 70%.
Summers, who served as the secretary of the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration and as director of the National Economic Council under the Obama administration, cited several economic storms on the horizon, such as lags in the repercussions from monetary policy and geopolitical snarls that could spring up.