Social Security Administration Waste
Okay, so when we talk about government waste, the numbers can get seriously huge. I saw a report from the Office of the Inspector General that said the Social Security Administration (SSA) messed up and overpaid $71.8 billion between 2015 and 2022 because of fraud and plain old mistakes. That sounds like a crazy amount, right? But here’s the thing: the SSA handed out $8.6 trillion during that time. So, that $71.8 billion was actually only 0.84% of the total.
Think of it like this: if your household spends $120,000 a year, losing 0.84% would be like losing $125 bucks. That’s about 34 cents a day. No one wants to lose money, but that’s a pretty small error rate when you think about how many people the SSA is paying benefits to.
The SSA has a massive job. They send checks to retirees, people with disabilities, and families who’ve lost a loved one. They also have to follow a ton of rules to make sure everyone’s eligible. No system that big is going to be perfect, but having a fraud rate of less than 1% over eight years shows they’re doing a pretty good job keeping an eye on things. Lots of private companies that handle tons of transactions have bigger problems with fraud and mistakes. Sure, they should always try to stop fraud, but it looks like the SSA already has pretty good controls in place to keep waste down.
It’s important to keep things in perspective when we’re talking about government spending. People often call for cutting the SSA, throwing around big dollar amounts without looking at the whole picture. Of course, stopping improper payments should always be the goal. But the SSA’s accuracy rate is surprisingly high, better than what you’d see in many businesses. Instead of just focusing on the losses, we should think about how to improve fraud prevention while also realizing that the system is already working really well, considering how big and complicated it is.
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