[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 4533]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         WASHINGTON WASTE WATCH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Chocola) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CHOCOLA. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to offer an update from the 
Washington Waste Watch. Every year the Federal Government wastes 
billions of dollars as a result of overpayments of government agencies, 
misuse of government credit cards, abuse of the Federal entitlement 
programs, and the mismanagement of the Federal bureaucracy. The waste 
exists in every program in every agency, in every Department of the 
Federal Government.
  Mr. Speaker, let me share a few examples with you. Accounting errors 
prevented the Department of Agriculture from being able to account for 
$5 billion of its receipts and expenditures. The Department had no way 
of knowing where the money came from and where it had gone.
  The Department of Defense spent $41 million to develop a system to 
track its ammunition, but 8 years later no system had been created or 
was close to completion.
  Individuals defaulting on their student loans cost the Department of 
Education $4 billion in 1999 alone. An audit of the Department of 
Energy discovered that the Department had incorrectly listed $900 
million in assets instead of liabilities and could not account for $56 
million in missing funds.
  That is not all, Mr. Speaker. A 2000 audit of the Department of Labor 
discovered that 35 percent of the recipients of dislocated worker 
benefits were ineligible for the program.
  More than a quarter of the IRS's earned income credit payments were 
improper. The error rate is consistently between 27 and 32 percent of 
the total claims. In 1999 alone it cost the American taxpayers $8.1 
billion.
  The Veterans Affairs Department continued to pay the daughter of a 
veteran $78,000 in benefits after the veteran had died.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, these are amazing examples. But what I think is 
even more amazing is that the Democrats want to raise our taxes to pay 
for more of this.
  Mr. Speaker, these are but a few of the examples of the enormous 
amounts of waste that the Federal Government generates every single 
year, but these are only the tip of the iceberg when compared to the 
total amount of waste in Federal Government.
  Mr. Speaker, as long as the Democrats continue to define the value of 
programs by how much we spend rather than how well or how effectively 
we spend, the taxpayers will continue to suffer.

                              {time}  2045

  Yet, Mr. Speaker, the Democrats still want to raise our taxes for 
more of this.

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