“Improper” payments made by the federal government have been discovered by an online watchdog group.
The U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. (Photo: howstuffworks)
“Improper” Payments Busted By Online Watchdog Group
$3 million “improper” payments that the federal government made over the past 20 years have been discovered by an online watchdog group, including bogus payments from last year which amount to a quarter-trillion. The payments were discovered by OpenTheBooks.com. They found out that several sectors of the government made questionable payments, especially during the pandemic.
Medicaid accounting made $80.5 billion in improper payments and Medicare with another $46.3 billion just last year. These were the worst agencies according to OpenTheBooks. The Injury Disaster Loan had $6.9 billion in wrongful payments and $29 billion for the Small Business Administration.
To put it simply, improper payments are payments that shouldn’t have been sent or paid. Sometimes, these kinds of payments mean fraud or payments that did not follow the proper approval process or checks that cost more or less for something. Either way, improper payments are an anomaly.
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“Improper” Payments During The Time of Each President of The Past Two Decades
Andrew Andrezejewski, the CEO of OpenTheBooks, stated that former President Obama may have spent a huge load of money in his time, but he is transparent with the accounting. Andrezejewski added that during Obama’s time, improper payments were lowered. Andrezejewski also added that the improper payments rose again during Trump’s administration during the pandemic and during Biden’s first year in office.
OpenTheBooks stated that the government usually struggles in getting the expenses back once they were out. Just last year, $247 billion and $4.4 billion in improper payments were labeled as fraud.
