78-09-A4

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Fraud

Transcript Are we deluding ourselves with ideas such as Proposition 13 and tax limitation? Are the doomcriers and Chicken Littles correct that we can't have economy in government. without chaos and elimination of basic government services? Suppose we forget about eliminating non-essential programs as a means of achieving economy and we didn't even talk about waste or extravagance in the programs and services we think should be retained. Instead, let's look at one area for potential savings on which we can all agree--fraud. Surely, no one will accept stealing as a legitimate government expense. It's regrettable but true that when vast sums of money are being sloshed about in the public bucket there are individuals who'll want to get their hands wet. To them, the money just doesn't seem to belong to anyone. Prosecutors, government officials and Congressional investigators estimate that fraud in the multitudinous federal aid programs amounts to about $12 billion a year. John Ohls of the General Accounting office doubles that estimate and puts the figure at nearer $25 billion. Come to think of it that's about the size of a tax cut Congress turned down a while back. Mr. Ohls says the fraud ranges from nickel-and-dime chiseling on food stamps to million dollar rip-offs. There is the daughter of a Civil War widow who collected widows benefits for 20 years after her mother died. There was the phony barber college operating in a store front that took the Veterans administration for five million dollars in G.I. educational benefits. Very little is being done about fraud. The Labor department with a $23- and-a-half billion budget devotes less than one-third of one per cent of it to fighting fraud. The Department of Transportation has only four investigators riding herd on the six billion dollar-a-year federal highway program. The Veterans administration has only one auditor for every $238 million it hands out. One spokesman says there isn't much enthusiasm for eliminating fraud. No one wants to find his program full of fraud so there is a tendency to look upon fraud as an accident. Then, too, in some of the aid programs administrators concentrate on the social problems they are trying to alleviate and fraud controls are looked upon as a hindrance. Maybe that's why a woman with a $170,000 home and four cars has been charged with paying for all that with welfare checks she collected under several different identities. Maybe tax limitation is the answer to fraud. If there is a ceiling on the money an agency or department or special program .can have, the administrators-- out of a sheer concern for survival will plug the leaks in the bucket. As it is and has been they just send the bill to the people. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 78-09-A4 Production Date 06/27/1978 Book/Page Online PDF Audio Youtube? No
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