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More privatization success for the Bush administration! The Washington Post reports Private debt collectors cost IRS more than they raise.
The Internal Revenue Service expects to lose more than $37 million by using private debt collectors to pursue tax scofflaws through a program… Since 2006, the agency has used three companies to go after a $1 billion slice of the nation’s unpaid taxes. Despite aggressive collection tactics, the companies have rounded up only $49 million, little more than half of what it has cost the IRS to implement the program. The debt collectors have pocketed commissions of up to 24 percent.
Now, as Americans file their 2007 taxes, Democratic leaders want to end the effort…
After years of lobbying by the private collection industry, the Republican-controlled Congress created the program in 2004…
Three firms were awarded contracts: Pioneer Credit Recovery, based in the western New York district represented by Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R), who supported the program and recently announced his retirement; the CBE Group of Waterloo, Iowa, the home state of Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R), who helped create the program; and Linebarger Goggan Blair and Sampson, a law firm based in Texas, home to President Bush.
The price to buy Congress is so incredibly cheap. Since 2001, Bush and Congress combined have done more harm to the United States than any terrorist group or foreign agents.
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Condé Nast Portfolio reports on The Pentagon’s $1 Trillion Problem “The defense department has spent billions to fix its antiquated financial systems. So why does the Pentagon still have no idea where its money goes?” (Hat tip Wired’s Danger Room.)
Since 2004, the Pentagon has spent roughly $16 billion annually to maintain and modernize the military’s business systems, but most are as unreliable as ever-even as the surge in defense spending is creating more room for error. The basic defense budget for 2007 was $439.3 billion, up 48 percent from 2001, excluding the vast additional sums appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to federal regulators and current and former Pentagon officials, the accounting process is so obsolete and error prone that it’s virtually impossible to tell where much of this money ends up. While the department’s brass has made a few patchwork improvements, billions are still unaccounted for. The problem is so deeply rooted that, 18 years after Congress required major federal agencies to be audited, the Pentagon still can’t be…
For the first three quarters of 2007, $1.1 trillion in Army accounting entries hadn’t been properly reviewed and substantiated, according to the Department of Defense’s inspector general. In 2006, $258.2 billion of recorded withdrawals and payments from the Army’s main account were unsupported. It’s as if the Army had submitted multibillion-dollar expense reports without any receipts.
Preoccupied with protecting their turf, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines continue to maintain separate, increasingly outdated systems that can’t talk to each other, trace disbursements, or detect overbilling by contractors. At the Indianapolis facility, as at the Defense Department’s four other main U.S. centers for financial operations, accounting programs under the same roof can’t share information without extensive jury-rigging, as though contracts, payments, and accounting had nothing to do with one another…
Nevertheless, the four military services still can’t be audited…
Perfect!
Four at Four continues below the fold with more cheery news of the decline of America, including the bottomless plummet of the economy, more evidence the “surge” is really working, and is Ariana Huffington really helping the left? Plus the Idiot of the Day.