ATLANTA (AP) – Good advocates, anti-tax conservatives, various striped politicians, everyday Americans about grouse “Not, fraud, abuse” The whole of the US government.
president Donald Trump Ministry of Government Efficiency, Leading by the world’s wealthiest manElon Musk opened up the latest chapter of phrases that were welcomed as common sense and risen as propaganda.
“It’s a very broad idea,” said Matt Wydinder of the American Enterprise Institute on the right. “But this phrase, “waste, fraud, abuse” means something distinctly different for different people. ”
Below is this rhetorical embrace and how it relates to the beginning of Trump’s second administration.
The seemingly far away government was always a bogeyman
It is difficult to identify the origins of “vain, fraud, abuse” as political rhetoric. But the concept and the resulting battle are older than the country. Consider “taxation without representative” and a break from the UK.
After gaining independence, the early American republic recreated the debate.
The two generations fought against Alexander Hamilton’s National Bank – a philosophical pioneer of everything from the Federal Reserve system to small business management loans, federally supported mortgage securities and bank deposit insurance.
Trump’s populist hero Andrew Jackson cast Second National Bank as a wealthy shareholder SOP. “The government does not have any evil necessary,” the seventh president wrote in one veto message. “That evil exists only in abuse.”
Many of Jackson’s fellow Southerners opposed the associated “internal improvements” of Henry Clay’s American system. The Enslaving Planter class saw spending on roads, bridges and navigable waterways long before Washington had “Infrastructure Week.”
Ronald Reagan solidified the modern conservative approach in his first inaugural address. “The government is not the solution to our problems,” he said in 1981. “The government is the problem.”
He opposed the “Queen of Welfare” as the public face of the federal government that cannot be described as an inefficient social safety net. Reagan is based on a crime fraud case of one woman for getting hundreds of thousands of dollars of support based on attacks critics accused of racist looting.
A pioneer to the Forge, Reagan has denounced a group of private sector CEOs to identify waste. The “Grace Committee,” named after the chairman, businessman J. Peter Grace, was more intentional than Doge, and its recommendations were not implemented on a large scale. Reagan and Congress have raised the retirement age for Social Security Eligibility.
The federal pie is huge
The federal government spent about $6.7 trillion in 2023.
The libertarian Kato Institute counts the largest ticket items like this: $3.19 trillion transfer payments. $1.15 trillion in state assistance. Interest payments on $900 billion in national debt. Purchase $840 billion in goods and services. $560 billion to pay federal workers.
Social Security and Medicare are made up of most of the CATO transfer categories and programs such as food aid and low-income household earned income tax credits. Medicaid accounts for most state aid, including education, transportation and other infrastructure.
The issue of Musk, or perhaps the Trump and Republican majority in Congress, is that Americans have conflicting views on the details.
Voting March 2023 Associated Press-NORC Civil Service Research Center Six in 10 US adults say the US government is spending “too much” overall. Still AP-NORC Opinion survey Photographed in January 2025, about two-thirds of the US government discovered that the US government is “too little” for social security and education. About six and ten people said the same about Medicare, the government health insurance program for older Americans, and support for poor Americans.
Most adults also say Medicaid, a health insurance program for the poorest working-age Americans and low-income children, is underfunded. Medicare and Medicaid payments go directly to patients, healthcare providers, and more in communities across the country, including doctors, hospitals, clinics, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers, and more.
How much is actually lost to waste and fraud?
The government’s Accountability Office and other agencies will prepare regular reports identifying inefficiencies and other issues. GAO said in 2024 that the recommendations enacted have saved about $667 billion since 2011.
Vivek Ramaswamy was another Trump ally initially involved in Doge, and was seized on hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts and programs that Congress did not expressly re-approve. But contrary to the characterization of Ramaswamy, most are ongoing programs ranging from veteran medical care to NASA functions.
Trump is not working on another pool of potential money. This is what is called the “tax gap.” It’s not about Republican and democratic debates about rates and loopholes. That is the estimated gap between what the federal government should collect under existing law and what is actually paid on time. Like “inappropriate payments,” it is a combination of administrative errors and intentional fraud.
IRS estimate for the 2022 tax year: $69.6 billion.
Other government reports identify “inappropriate payments” (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance).
According to WeIdinger, an AEI budget expert, this includes fraudulent spending, but most documents are overpayments or payments that are required. The mistakes include Social Security payments one month after the recipient dies, miscalculating the benefits of someone in the government, receiving one unemployment check after someone has received a new job, or from a health care provider. Includes inclusion of inadequately documented claims.
However, Weidinger also has a much higher rate of fraud rates, such as unemployment during the community pandemic, with special government programs betting on the system to make money, identity thieves from abroad. I also paid attention to this.
“We won’t recover all of that,” he said.
He added that government fraud and inappropriate payment estimates are probably too low, even if they don’t reach the level of savings Musk and Trump promised.
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