[[{“value”:”The federal government doesn’t have the people it needs to adequately monitor and vet its enormous streams of payments to defense contractors, hospitals and individuals. For example, administrative expenses account for only half a percent of the budget of the Social Security Administration. Trying to squeeze down that half percent by cutting personnel could lead to misspending
The post Peter Coy on DOGE appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.”}]]
The federal government doesn’t have the people it needs to adequately monitor and vet its enormous streams of payments to defense contractors, hospitals and individuals. For example, administrative expenses account for only half a percent of the budget of the Social Security Administration. Trying to squeeze down that half percent by cutting personnel could lead to misspending of the other 99.5 percent of the budget.
Here is more from the NYT, interesting throughout. Here is another bit:
To fix such problems, [Brian] Riedl said, “you need G.A.O. and other government experts and others who have done auditing to do most of the legwork.” There is no single easily repeatable fix: “Every program, every program failure and example of mismanagement has its own story.”
You may recall that private health insurance companies have fairly high “overhead,” perhaps a misleading term but nonetheless relevant for these debates. There are hundreds of billions of “lost” funds at DOD and in Medicare. Does the plan to improve on that performance involve more staff or less staff?
The post Peter Coy on DOGE appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Current Affairs, Political Science
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