Show Me The Money

By TAD BARTIMUS

Ho-hum. No big headline, no bold type, just a short news item announcing that our government made $20 billion in overpayments last year. 

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said the misspent funds represented 1 percent of the federal budget. Perhaps $20 billion is a negligible sum to bureaucrats but it's a whole lot of money to you and me. The same government that giveth also taketh away; we have a keen interest in where our hard-earned money goes and who gets it.

It's irksome that tax revenue finances some services we neither benefit from nor philosophically support. It's infuriating to learn that our money is squandered paying bills that aren't owed.

The OMB report noted that Medicare overspent by $12.1 billion, or 6.3 percent of its total budget. The doctors, nurses, hospitals, physical therapists, chiropractors and other health care providers who got too much money presumably kept it and spent it. The report did not say that anyone raised their hand and protested: "Wait! I don't deserve this. I didn't do anything to get it. I am sending it back."

Same thing for the $3.3 billion the Department of Housing and Urban Development overpaid in rent subsidies. Easy come, easy go. Oh well.

Somebody drops a wallet full of cash on the sidewalk. The owner's name and address are in it. What to do? Give it back, of course. To do less is a moral crime, if not a legal one. 

There's no difference between finding a wallet and getting too much in a Medicare check. 

Federal and state officials say violent crimes and property crimes have declined in the last decade, but white collar crimes are rising. Sources recently told The New York Times there's a "marked increase in accounting and corporate infractions, fraud in health care, government procurement and bankruptcy, identity theft, illegal corporate espionage and intellectual property piracy."
The stock market is down, baby boomers are aging, 401(k)s and mutual funds are eroding. A Harvard MBA doesn't mean what it used to. Money handlers at major corporations are taking the Fifth Amendment; going to jail; committing suicide. Fortune 500 investigations are daily media fodder.

But what about the internist down the street? The apartment house landlord on the next block? What do they do when they get too much Medicare or HUD money? Do they object? Or do they cash the check with a sense of entitlement? "I work hard and don't get paid enough so I deserve this extra money. So what if the government made a mistake? They'll never figure it out. I'm keeping it."
My husband's sixth-grade students tell themselves the same thing when they "borrow" a pencil or a ruler that never gets returned, when somebody's lunch ticket disappears and the culprit doesn't 'fess up, when a teacher's cell phone vanishes from his desk drawer: "I deserve it," the thief tells him or herself. 

That's where $20 billion in federal waste and fraud starts. 
The Bush administration says it plans to end the overpayments by making it easier to administer grants, tighten the Pentagon's financial management (What? No more $1,000 hammers?), set standards for "intra-agency transactions" and dispose of under-performing assets. Does that mean they'll fire the bean counters making the overpayments?

There's a simpler way. If our government sends us too much money, we give it back. That attitude will always keep us out of jail.


© 2002 The Women Syndicate

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