The big problem isn't the "black budget". The problem is weapon systems that are kept going because the plant in some congressmen's district. The quantity purchased is small and the unit cost high. For example the B-52 bomber was "replaced" with the B-1 and then B-2, which had smaller payloads and were only purchased in small quantities at huge prices (104 x B-1, 21 x B-2). They were so bad, that the B-52 is still in service, 63 years after the last one was built. The new B-45 program was started 14 years ago and only 3 planes have been built.
Note that there is still one real Republican in the House, Rep. Thomas Massie (KY) who voted against this nonsense.
Maybe Congress should fix that problem. Why do you think Musk can fix it? The hospitals aren't technically cheating anyone. Medicare has payment rates for pretty much every service a hospital offers and Medicaid has even lower rates which is why no medical services want to accept new Medicare/Medicaid patients. Neither have anything to do with the rates negotiated by insurance companies. This is an ongoing issue and one that Obamacare SHOULD have addressed since no patient ever has any clue what any procedure that is covered by insurance will be billed at or what amount the insurer will actually pay. As I've mentioned on numerous occasions, if I have NO insurance, Bridgeport Hospital will try to make me pay $5,000 for a Cat Scan. But if I have insurance, my insurer will pay between $300 and $500. AND, if I can't pay my medical bill as frequently happens with illegal aliens, the hospital will report the loss as $5,000 because that is the amount the patient didn't pay and it doesn't matter what the hospital normally gets paid. That's how the stupid Obamacare got approved. Insuring the uninsured would "save" the hospital from the $5,000 loss that was bogus to begin with. The hospitals use cost accounting systems to amortize their capital costs and expenses across all items. The Medicare and Medicaid rates are more based on the reality of what something should cost.
Most of the people on the government payroll are "overhead" and don't deliver ANY service. Look at the numbers for USAID. 20,000 employees but only ~250 are required to run the agency.
If the system they use to track traffic were improved, perhaps the staffing level could be reduced. The reports say the current system uses floppy disks. I haven't had a system with them since the 80's.
Determining if a person is alive or dead takes too much time. The regular staff should have been doing that as SOP in an on-going basis. At a minimum, they should have an "assumed deceased" status so they make sure to investigate before approving payments. The numbers of "probably deceased" should never have grown into the millions. Pointing out the potential problems should have been enough to light a fire under the normal employees. If someone pointed out that level of potential errors in any application I was responsible for, I would hang my head in shame and tear up my coding pad. Instead they "justified" the errors.
They are off limits regarding benefit cuts. You need to listen to ENTIRE sentences. Oh, that's right. Your news source leaves out words to change the meaning of what Trump says. Cuts are NOT off limits regarding waste, fraud, and abuse. Duh!
Now we are dealing with an issue that the Access User's Group knows well, messed-up databases. The SSA has other systems in place to prevent payments from going out to the deceased, so they never bother to update the death information. I have to remind people that if you discontinue a product, you need to set the reorder point to 0, rather than rely on discontinued products from being excluded from reorder reports.
No, it requires Congress giving up their position on pork. Instead of each member voting his own personal interests, they need to be voting the country's interests.
Organized approaches have worked. The military base closure process under Goldwater-Nichols save a lot of money.
The SSA admits to the fraud. Fraud goes beyond payments to dead people BTW. And there is simply no excuse for not keeping a clean database as you pointed out. Look at all the people who collect SS due to disabilities. Leave NOTHING that can cause confusion during an audit.
What more evidence do you need? The last audit of the system was done recently and they found nearly 72 Billon in fraud, made recommendations, and nothing was implemented to fix the problem. You can do all the audits you want, and if nothing is corrected, it is meaningless.
No amount of evidence will ever satisfy @RogerCooper. He will always demand more, and more, and more ....
Bigger is not always better. It is far better for the country's security to have the military distributed. That also means that we shouldn't have ONE shipyard to build subs. We should probably have at least four, etc. Granted, a land invasion is unlikely but given the pissing contest we are currently having with both Canada and Mexico, anything could happen. Plus, China is already gaining footholds in Central America and the islands of the Caribbean so they will eventually have us surrounded.
