The conservative poll Donald Trump could not win

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-cons...could-not-win/

By Reena Flores CBS News September 26, 2015, 5:14 PM

The conservative poll Donald Trump could not win


The results are in at the Values Voter Summit -- and, for once, Donald Trump fails to top a conservative poll.

The straw poll at the summit, a conservative gathering hosted by the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., showed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz winning over voters, leading the pack for the third year in a row.

Cruz, with 35 percent of support, was followed by neurosurgeon-turned-politician Ben Carson, with 18 percent of the vote. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee came in third, drawing 14 percent of supporters, followed by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at 13 percent.

Registering at fifth place on the survey results: Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner in many state and national polls.

The religious conservatives in attendance simply weren't buying what Trump had to offer. Despite bringing his Bible on stage when addressing the audience, Trump registered at only 5 percent. Trump was even booed at the summit when he slammed Rubio over his immigration policies and called him a "clown."

Below Trump, Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina came in with 4 percent and 3 percent of the vote, respectively.

Trump's low support among the conservative evangelical base will come as no surprise for those following the billionaire's presidential campaign. Trump has been known to flout convention when it comes to wooing the religious right, even admitting once that he was "not sure" that he had ever asked God for forgiveness.

"If I do something wrong, I think I just try and make it right, I don't bring God into that picture," Trump said in July at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa.

Still, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who announced the summit's results, said that Trump's fifth place showing was still "pretty good."

Of the issues most important to attendees, the top three included protecting religious liberty, advocating against abortion rights and protecting "natural marriage."

Carson, with 25 percent of the vote, was the first choice for the vice-presidential slot.

At least 2,700 registered participants attended the summit.

© 2015 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Of the issues most important to attendees, the top three included protecting religious liberty, advocating against abortion rights and protecting "natural marriage."

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Our country has trade deficits of over $500 billion a year as of 2014, we have 72 million people on Medicaid, when 6 years ago we only had 49 million, we have 20 to 30 million illegal aliens roaming our country, over 20 million unemployed American Workers, and a $19 trillion national debt. But the top three issues most important to the 2700 people attending this summit is their religious liberty, forcing pregnant girls and women into childbirth against their will and gay couples to live either alone, in sin or in a relationship that makes them sick?? REALLY??!!

Tony Perkins is one of these strange birds that established himself a very, very nice living running his 501 C 3 tax fraud charity promoting religious beliefs that not only harm other people, they impose on the very religious liberty he and his attendees want to protect. It's the ole backward notion of "freedom for me, but not for thee".

Trump just needs to stick to his guns and make sure all Americans know that he stands for all our rights, and that his job as President is to fix the country, not meddle in the personal and private lives of our citizens based on the whims of one religious group or another.

And equal to the trade deficit is the federal tax evasion deficit---$500 billion. What gives more and more people the right to say " Hey suckers, I won't pay all my share, so the rest of you will have to make it up for me." Don't try to paint them as anti-big government heros either!!

Nobody ever talks about this. But it just goes to reason that law abiding Americans will be even further harmed by this reckless activity. If the actual amount was something like $50 billion in a big nation like ours I might just say " Hey it's struggling people just trying to stay afloat." But----this is very serious.

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Originally Posted by Captainron

And equal to the trade deficit is the federal tax evasion deficit---$500 billion. What gives more and more people the right to say " Hey suckers, I won't pay all my share, so the rest of you will have to make it up for me." Don't try to paint them as anti-big government heros either!!

Nobody ever talks about this. But it just goes to reason that law abiding Americans will be even further harmed by this reckless activity. If the actual amount was something like $50 billion in a big nation like ours I might just say " Hey it's struggling people just trying to stay afloat." But----this is very serious.

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That's a government figure you can't rely on, because it isn't true. There's no way for anyone to know what revenue has been evaded under the income tax scheme without knowing what everyone actually owes, which can't be known without auditing everyone in the country every year. The income tax is a failed system from the git-go.

Those numbers are just manufactured by the IRS to try to lobby Congress for more money to do more audits. Look at this chart in Wikipedia. See the gradual though up and down but overall incline of "evasion" since 2001? Well, why would that be case during the recession when millions of people lost fortunes, their jobs, their income, their homes, their retirements, and so much more? Household income is less, so it's not even possible that evasion has risen when incomes have declined. So there's no hope of sending the government out to collect what isn't owed because the incomes aren't there to create the tax obligation to begin with. If the government wants more revenue, it has to fix the economy, and to fix the economy, we have to pass the FairTax and bring our industries and jobs back to the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_ev..._United_States

Captainron wrote:

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And equal to the trade deficit is the federal tax evasion deficit---$500 billion.

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That number, 500 billion, wouldn't surprise me one bit! Furthermore, let's not forget about the many other frauds and abuses in federal government programs that add to our tax burden.

Fraud and Abuse in Federal Programs
August 2009

Introduction

The federal government is a vast money transfer machine. It spends hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars each year on subsidy programs—from the massive Medicare to hundreds of more obscure programs that most people have never heard of. There are more than 1,800 federal subsidy programs.¹
With such a huge array of handouts, the federal budget has become victim to large-scale fraud and abuse—that is, people taking government benefits to which they are not entitled. Just about every subsidy program suffers from fraud and abuse, and we illustrate the problems here with discussions of Medicare, Medicaid, housing programs, student aid, and farm subsidies. Losses to federal taxpayers from fraud, abuse, and other types of improper payments are in the ballpark of $100 billion a year or more.²

There have been efforts to reduce improper payments, but the abuse of federal programs continues at high levels. We think that federal subsidy programs should be cut because they harm the economy and are unfair to taxpayers.³ But endemic fraud and abuse provides an additional reason to pursue cuts and terminations to many federal programs.

Medicare and Medicaid

Fraud in the two main federal health programs is huge, imposing costs on taxpayers at least in the tens of billions of dollars each year. As broad-based government programs, the massive size of Medicare and Medicaid makes them very difficult to police. Medicare, for example, processes 1.2 billion claims each year by computer, generally without human eyes checking them for accuracy.

Let's look first at the fraud and abuse problems in Medicare. The Government Accountability Office estimates that there are about $17 billion of improper Medicare payments each year, including fraudulent and erroneous overpayments to health care providers. ⁴ That figure does not include the huge new prescription drug benefit, which is thought to be highly susceptible to abuse.

Other estimates of improper Medicare payments are higher. Malcolm Sparrow of Harvard University, a top specialist in health care fraud, argues that estimates by federal auditors do not measure all types of fraud. He believes that as much as 20 percent of federal health program budgets are consumed by fraud and abuse, which would be about $85 billion a year for Medicare.⁵

Sparrow says that criminals can rip off federal health care programs simply by carefully filling out and submitting the proper forms, and then the "claims will be paid in full and on time, without a hiccup, by a computer, and with no human involvement at all."⁶ He argues that the abuses do not just stem from occasional overbillings by doctors, but involves organized looting of health care programs by criminals.

A perfect example of what Sparrow is talking about was reported by the Washington Post in 2008. A high-school dropout with a laptop computer was able to single-handedly cheat Medicare out of $105 million by electronically submitting 140,000 fraudulent claims over four years for equipment and services.⁷
There are many ways that Medicare gets ripped off: "Billing by health care providers for services not rendered, billing for products not delivered, misrepresenting services, unbundling services, billing for medically unnecessary services, duplicate billing, increasing units of service which are subject to a payment rate, falsifying cost reports resulting in increased payment to the health care provider, kickbacks, and on and on."⁸ You can read about the different types of fraud on Medicare's website.⁹

One area of rampant fraud is Medicare's medical equipment subsidies.¹⁰ One scam is for doctors to steer patients into buying motorized wheelchairs that they don't really need, but that Medicare pays for. Then the doctors receive kickbacks from wheelchair supply companies or other operatives. A 2008 report by Senate investigators found that 30 percent of medical equipment reimbursements that they examined appeared to be fraudulent.¹¹

Another area of fraud is Medicare's home health care benefits. Medicare pays for home visits by health professionals under certain limited conditions, but patients find ways to illegally get around those limits. In addition, criminal gangs have simply looted this program by submitting false claims.¹² The costs of Medicare home health care coverage soared 44 percent over the last five years, and fraud appears to be an important cause of the increase.¹³Auditors have been concerned about fraud in home health care for years, but the problem never seems to get solved.

The bigger Medicare gets, the more fraud there is. The newest subsidy—the $60 billion a year prescription drug benefit—is thought to be particularly susceptible to abuse.¹⁴ A physicians' publication noted that the benefit was "staggeringly complicated and largely incomprehensible to the very population it was intended to help. It's also ripe with opportunities for the dishonest and fraught with traps for the unwary. … The drug program's very complexity is a source of fraud."¹⁵

The Medicaid program also has a giant fraud and abuse problem. The GAO puts the cost of improper Medicaid payments at $33 billion, or about 10.5 percent of the program's total spending.¹⁶ But if improper payments are 20 percent of the program's cost, as Malcolm Sparrow thinks might be the case, that would be a $63 billion annual loss to taxpayers.¹⁷

New York's Medicaid is especially fraud-ridden. The former chief investigator of the state's Medicaid fraud office believes that about 10 percent of the state's Medicaid budget is consumed by pure fraud, while another 20 to 30 percent is consumed by dubious spending that might not cross the line of being outright criminal.¹⁸

A 2005 investigation by the New York Times found remarkably brazen examples of fraud and abuse in New York's Medicaid. The article noted that the program has "become so huge, so complex, and so lightly policed that it is easily exploited … the program has been misspending billions of dollars annually because of fraud, waste, and profiteering."¹⁹ Here are some of the findings:

• A dentist stole more than $1 million from New York's Medicaid by making claims for fictitious patients and procedures. She even had the chutzpah to make claims for 991 procedures supposedly performed in a single day.
• Medicaid's subsidies for handicapped transportation are widely abused. The program pays $50 per trip for handicapped persons to go to doctor's appointments, but investigators found that many people using the service were not handicapped and that many transportation companies were rigging the system to earn unjustified profits.
• Schools across the state charged Medicaid more than $1 billion for unneeded or unprovided special education activities as a way to bilk the state out of additional Medicaid grant money.
• Criminal gangs diverted Medicaid-covered muscle-building drugs that were intended for AIDS patients to bodybuilders.

Similar schemes to bilk federal health programs are routinely uncovered across the nation. Federal investigators say that they play "whack-a-mole" with organized criminals, because when they crack down on them in one area of the country, they move to a different area and continue bilking federal health programs.²⁰

A classic type of fraud in both Medicare and Medicaid is double-billing. In one recent case, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey double-billed Medicaid repeatedly over the years by directly submitting claims for outpatient physician services, even as doctors working in the hospital's outpatient centers were submitting their own claims for exactly the same procedures.²¹

Another area of fraud is Medicaid's long-term care benefits, which cover the costs of nursing homes and home care for the elderly poor. Medicaid pays about half of the costs of all long-term care in the nation. The program has complex rules for eligibility related to one's income and financial assets. But nursing homes are expensive, and so the program creates incentives for middle- and higher-income families to try and qualify for it. Indeed, an industry of financial consultants helps seniors hide their income and assets so that they become eligible. This sort of abuse costs taxpayers about one-fifth of the program's cost, or about $13 billion in 2009.²²

One reason why Medicaid has high levels of fraud is that it is an open-ended "matching" program. The states administer the program and decide how much to spend, but the federal government pays more than half of the costs. That creates a disincentive for state officials to worry too much about fraud and abuse. Indeed, state governments themselves have a history of abusing Medicaid by creating schemes to improperly boost their receipt of federal matching dollars. The Washington Post rightly called these state schemes a "swindle," but noted the political resistance to doing anything about it.²³ One solution to these problems is to turn Medicaid into a block grant and freeze the amount of aid to each state. That would immediately give states a big incentive to cut all types of waste, fraud, and abuse.

In sum, the magnitude and complexity of federal health programs results in a huge and ongoing waste of taxpayer funds. Sparrow argues that health care fraud and abuse "might be as low as one hundred billion. More likely two or three. Possibly four or five" hundred billion.²⁴ The Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Service told Congress in 2009: "Although it is not possible to measure precisely the extent of fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, everywhere it looks the Office of Inspector General continues to find fraud against these programs."²⁵

Housing Subsidies

Federal housing programs have long been a ripe target for fraud and abuse. In 1971, Time discussed a scandal at the Federal Housing Administration in which "real estate speculators used the program to make huge profits at the expense of the poor through what amounts to sheer fraud."²⁶ The article also discussed a scandal from the 1950s whereby "builders pocketed millions of dollars of unearned profit from mortgage loans that exceeded the cost of construction" under a federal program. The magazine concluded that "whenever the government writes a blank check to the housing industry, some sort of scandal is likely to result."²⁷

In the 1980s, huge scandals broke out at the Department of Housing and Urban Development involving influence-peddling and gross mismanagement, costing taxpayers billions of dollars.²⁸ Senior HUD staff were using their positions for personal gain, and when they left HUD they used their inside contacts to win subsidies and contracts.²⁹ HUD Secretary Sam Pierce favored friends and political allies with contracts, and his mismanagement allowed HUD programs to become targets for abuse by financial and real estate interests.³⁰

Today, HUD provides a huge range of subsidies to state and local governments, real estate businesses, financial institutions, and nonprofit groups. The largest share of HUD's budget goes toward rental subsidies for low-income tenants. There are about $1 billion in erroneous and fraudulent overpayments of these subsidies each year, according to the GAO.³¹ Tenants make false claims to gain eligibility for rental subsidies, and local public housing authorities (PHAs) have often abused these federal monies.

Public housing is another area of abuse. HUD provides about $8 billion a year to more than 2,000 PHAs. PHAs are infamous for their mismanagement, corruption, and wasteful spending.³²

HUD is supposed to oversee the PHAs, but its efforts leave a lot to be desired. The Miami Herald won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for its series exposing fraud and corruption in Miami-Dade's PHA—a PHA that had passed HUD audits.³³ Here are some of the abuses uncovered by the Herald:³⁴

• The PHA gave developers and nonprofit groups with political connections millions of dollars to build affordable housing, but they ended up building shoddy houses or no houses at all.
• HUD gave the PHA $35 million to tear down dilapidated public housing and replace it with new affordable housing. Six years later, half the money was gone, and only three houses had been built. The agency frittered away its money on staff salaries and consultants.
• Instead of selling new houses to low-income buyers, the PHA allowed developers to make sales to wealthy investors who then "flipped" them for a profit.

The Miami-Dade problems are far from unique. For decades, PHAs across the nation have been mishandling taxpayer money. Unfortunately, HUD rarely cuts off the mismanaged PHAs. A USA Today article counted 61 PHAs that received funding from the 2009 federal stimulus bill despite repeated financial mismanagement.³⁵

Another area of ongoing abuse is the Federal Housing Administration's mortgage loan insurance system. Buyers abuse the system by obtaining loans under false pretenses, and lenders abuse the system by issuing loans for more than properties are worth. These sorts of fraud increase the risks of default, which ultimately costs the taxpayers. As an example, a New Jersey underwriter routinely falsified employment verification documents to obtain FHA-insured mortgages for unqualified borrowers, which resulted in $10 million in losses after 66 mortgages defaulted in 2007.³⁶

In sum, programs for public housing, rental assistance, and housing finance have been magnets for fraud and abuse for decades. The Department of Housing and Urban Development ought to be dismantled, and its poor record on controlling fraud and abuse is one good reason why.

Student Loans

Federal student-aid programs have long been subject to fraud and abuse. The three main culprits are students and their families, educational institutions, and lending companies. It is difficult to stop the cheating in student loan programs because they "are large, complex, and inherently risky," according to the Inspector General of the Department of Education.³⁷ Federal student loan programs involve more than 6,000 postsecondary institutions and more than 3,000 lenders.

Students and their families cheat aid programs by falsely reporting their income level and other items in order to garner larger benefits. With the Pell college grant program, for example, this type of fraud costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars per year.³⁸ Another abuse is that many students simply decide not to pay back their federal student loans. In 2001, the GAO found that there were more than $20 billion of student loans in default.³⁹
Educational institutions often pilfer money meant for students. Under most student loan and grant programs, federal aid is sent to thousands of educational institutions, which are supposed to distribute it to eligible students. However, that distribution system has attracted swarms of shady schools and administrators over the decades that pocket the federal money at the expense of students and taxpayers.

A string of scandals in the early 1990s made clear the magnitude of the problem. One scandal regarded the trade school American Career Training Corporation in Florida. The school recruited new "students" at housing projects and helped them take out loans.⁴⁰ The school owners received tens of millions of dollars in federally guaranteed student loans, and simply pocketed it. Another scheme involved 21 Jewish schools in New York State that used millions of dollars in Pell grants to line their pockets while spending little on education.⁴¹ Yet another scandal at the time involved owners of Advanced Business College in Puerto Rico, who used Pell grants to buy $3 million worth of sports cars and real estate for themselves.

A Senate investigation in 1991 found that student loan programs were "plagued with fraud and abuse at every level," which cost taxpayers billions of dollars.⁴² The investigation accused the Department of Education of "gross mismanagement, ineptitude, and neglect," finding that it had a "dismal record" of combating loan abuses.⁴³ Losses from the student loan program totaled an enormous $13 billion between 1983 and 1990. In 1994, the department admitted that it was losing a staggering $3 billion or more annually to waste, fraud, and loan defaults. Education Secretary Richard Riley called the department's oversight "worse than lax."⁴⁴

Today, fraud and abuse may have been reduced from the extraordinarily high levels of the 1980s and 1990s, but there are still large amounts of waste. In 2002, a GAO investigation revealed how easy it was to scam the student loan programs by simply sending in applications under fake student names.⁴⁵ In 2005, an investigation found that owners of a company called the CSC Institute stole $4.3 million of the $13 million it received in Pell grants.⁴⁶The GAO currently estimates that taxpayers lose more than $1 billion a year to fraud and abuse in student aid programs.⁴⁷

A new scandal involving financial institutions garnering excessively high profits from student loans has rocked the student-aid industry in recent years. Under the Federal Family Education Loan Program, dozens of loan originators figured out how to earn a 9.5 percent guaranteed return from the government, even though market interest rates have been much lower. Lenders have been able to earn billions of dollars at taxpayer expense. In response, some policymakers argue that private lenders should be cut out of the federal student loan process, and that all lending ought to flow directly from the Department of Education. But the department has been a terrible financial manager of its aid programs, including its direct-loan programs. Thus, the best reform would be to completely terminate the federal role in student aid, and leave the activity to market-based private lending and to charitable organizations.

In 2007, Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, testified to Congress that "federal student aid is crying out for reform. The system is redundant, it's Byzantine, and it's broken. In fact, it's often more difficult for students to get aid than it is for bad actors to game the system."⁴⁸ She's right, but the system should be ended, not reformed.

Farm Subsidies

The U.S. Department of Agriculture distributes more than $15 billion in cash subsidies to farmers and owners of farmland each year.⁴⁹ More than 800,000 farmers and landowners receive subsidies each year, but the payments are heavily tilted toward the largest producers.⁵⁰ Indeed, the largest 10 percent of recipients typically receive about 72 percent of all subsidy payments.⁵¹ In 2007, the average income of farm households was $86,223, or 28 percent higher than the average of all U.S. households.⁵²

The biggest scandal with farm subsidies is that they exist at all, as discussed elsewhere.⁵³ But fraud and abuse in farm programs add insult to injury for taxpayers. One GAO study found that improper or fraudulent farm-subsidy payments are as much as half a billion dollars a year.⁵⁴ But other GAO studies make clear that the USDA doesn't have a good handle on how much cheating is actually going on. For example, the USDA does not adequately police the income eligibility limits on subsidy programs.⁵⁵

Fraud and abuse in the farm programs takes many forms. Congress puts limits on subsidy payments to particular farmers, but farmers create complex business structures to get around those limits.⁵⁶ Farmers are supposed to pay back loans, but farm loan programs have high delinquency rates.⁵⁷
Sloppy administration by the USDA makes cheating easier. A 2007 GAO report found that the USDA paid $1.1 billion in subsidies over six years to 170,000 deceased individuals.⁵⁸ There is also the problem of "emergency" farm payments being handed out willy-nilly. After adverse events such as droughts, Congress often dishes out emergency payments to farmers who don't need them or who have not even asked for them.⁵⁹ In addition, some farmers will claim to have experienced crop damage even when they haven't in order to receive subsidy payments.⁶⁰

The government response to a drought in 2003 illustrates how emergency subsidies get wasted. Ranchers needed feed for their cattle because of a drought, and the government responded by providing some of its large stockpile of powdered milk. However, much of the free milk ended up being illegally diverted to other uses, which allowed speculators to earn large profits at taxpayer expense.⁶¹

Finally, the federal crop insurance system operates in a manner that enriches private insurance companies at the expense of taxpayers. The companies receive federal subsidies for providing farm insurance, but those subsidies are not passed through to farmers in the form of lower premiums. Instead, the companies operate like a cartel and are able to earn high profits from excessive premiums, all at taxpayer expense.⁶²

Other Federal Programs

Many other federal programs suffer from substantial fraud and abuse. The data cited in the following bullets are from a 2009 GAO report on improper payments, unless otherwise noted:⁶³

• Food Stamps. This welfare program is a target for fraud because it is so large and complex. The government must keep track of millions of individuals to accurately document their eligibility while keeping tabs on the 160,000 retailers who deal in food stamps to look for illegal trafficking. In the past, the program spawned a huge black market as recipients exchanged their food stamps for cash on the street. Today, food stamps are issued on electronic cards, and fraud levels have been reduced. Nonetheless, the program's improper payment rate is still about 6 percent, costing taxpayers about $1.7 billion annually.
• School Lunches. A large share of subsidized school meals are taken by families with incomes above the legal cutoff points. Program audits and statistical data have found that about one-quarter of those receiving free and reduced-cost lunches are not eligible.⁶⁴ Those unjustified benefits cost taxpayers about $1.4 billion annually.
• Supplemental Security Income. This program pays out $4.6 billion in improper and fraudulent benefits annually.
• Children's Health Insurance Program. About 15 percent, or more than $800 million annually, of CHIP benefits are improper or fraudulent.
• Child Care programs. The federal child care, foster care, and Head Start programs pay out about $900 million in improper and fraudulent benefits annually.
• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Thisprogram pays out $1.7 billion annually in improper and fraudulent benefits.
• Unemployment Insurance. Almost $4 billion of annual UI benefits are improper or fraudulent.
• Universal Service Fund. This Federal Communications Commission program pays out almost $1.3 billion annually in improper and fraudulent subsidies.
• Earned Income Tax Credit. Almost one-third of EITC payments—$12 billion annually—are improper or fraudulent.
• Veterans Affairs. This department loses at least $800 million annually on improper and fraudulent payments, but the total is likely higher because losses are not reported for all of the department's programs.
• Emergency Response. Subsidies provided in the wake of emergencies are highly susceptible to fraud and abuse because funds are usually pushed out the door quickly with little planning or oversight. Federal recovery aid after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 were subject to high levels of waste. The GAO estimated that about $1 billion of payments by the Federal Emergency Management Agency made in just the first sixth months after the storms were "improper and potentially fraudulent."⁶⁵
• Procurement. We have focused on fraud and abuse in federal subsidy programs. But another area of fraud and abuse is federal contracting. Most people have heard of this problem in defense procurement—weapons contractors that rip off federal taxpayers with inflated billings. But fraud and abuse in contracting are government-wide problems, which hamper the ability of government programs to operate efficiently.

Conclusions

All kinds of people are using the federal budget as a cookie jar to garner benefits to which they are not entitled. Families seek improper benefits through subsidies such as the school lunch program. Hospitals rip off taxpayers by double billing Medicare and Medicaid. Criminals loot subsidy programs such as food stamps. Owners of nonprofit groups that are supposed to aid the needy line their own pockets with taxpayer funds.

There have been many efforts to end such abuses, but federal programs are hugely complex and they deliver benefits to thousands or millions of recipients. Federal agencies are often sloppy in their administration of programs, and Congress provides little serious oversight.

Fraud and abuse generate a catch-22 for policymakers who support spending programs. On the one hand, fraud is clearly a waste of money and should be stopped. On the other hand, minimizing fraud requires extensive bureaucratic rules and heavy enforcement, which reduces program efficiency. In a recent article on defense procurement, the Washington Post noted that reforms a decade ago intended to make the system more efficient and entrepreneurial have created the serious side-effect of increasing various forms of abuse.⁶⁶

A further problem is that Congress has little political incentive to cut down on waste and abuse. That's because costs are benefits to politicians. If investigators find abuse by, say, a defense contractor in a member's congressional district, that member will usually be inclined to take the contractor's view of things. After all, if the contractor overbilled federal taxpayers, it just means that more money was spent in the member's district. Of course, members of Congress must look as if they are on the side of the taxpayer, and so they will hold occasional oversight hearings to investigate abuses. But sustained congressional efforts to really combat waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal budget are rare.

In sum, fraud and abuse is a serious shortcoming of many federal programs. It is appalling that $100 billion a year—or perhaps much more—of benefits are misappropriated by people not entitled to them. Federal subsidies for industries such as health care and education ought to be cut because private markets can usually perform these activities better than governments. But the endemic fraud and abuse experienced by many government programs provides an additional reason to pursue major cuts in the federal budget.

- See more at: http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/....gvBz1Hvp.dpuf

We need to get the GOP controlled Congress to take that on. We know the Dems won't do it. I doubt that they will even try, unless they get the Presidency also. The Republicans have had their earth shattering mistakes, like badly planned military adventures. But the Dems tacitly support this fraud when they ought to be downright embarassed. They don't tackle anything, unless it becomes a way to target Republicans in some way.:mad:

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Originally Posted by Judy

That's a government figure you can't rely on, because it isn't true. There's no way for anyone to know what revenue has been evaded under the income tax scheme without knowing what everyone actually owes, which can't be known without auditing everyone in the country every year. The income tax is a failed system from the git-go.

Those numbers are just manufactured by the IRS to try to lobby Congress for more money to do more audits. Look at this chart in Wikipedia. See the gradual though up and down but overall incline of "evasion" since 2001? Well, why would that be case during the recession when millions of people lost fortunes, their jobs, their income, their homes, their retirements, and so much more? Household income is less, so it's not even possible that evasion has risen when incomes have declined. So there's no hope of sending the government out to collect what isn't owed because the incomes aren't there to create the tax obligation to begin with. If the government wants more revenue, it has to fix the economy, and to fix the economy, we have to pass the FairTax and bring our industries and jobs back to the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_ev..._United_States

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Can't you read? I said "don't try to paint them as anti-big government heroes either!!" So if some people can object to our tax laws, why can't others object to our immigration laws, then? This is ALWAYS the excuse "Well, they don't obey the law themselves so why should we?"

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he was "not sure" that he had ever asked God for forgiveness.

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If this is true and being accurately reported it is sad news to hear. Trump is talking about a war on Christians and how Mexico does not like WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) and as such he is identifying himself as a protestant... but to have never asked God for forgiveness of sins.. that is a huge departure from Christianity.

Are we not all called to be very humble before God?

W

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Originally Posted by Captainron

Can't you read? I said "don't try to paint them as anti-big government heroes either!!" So if some people can object to our tax laws, why can't others object to our immigration laws, then? This is ALWAYS the excuse "Well, they don't obey the law themselves so why should we?"

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What are you saying? I didn't paint anyone as an "anti-big government hero". Republicans have always opposed the income tax, we've opposed it vehemently since it was instituted by Democrats in 1913. We spend more money funding the IRS to process paperwork and invade people's lives than we spend on EPA to clean up and protect our environment.

The annual budget for the IRS in 2016 will be $14 Billion.

The annual budget for the EPA in 2016 will be $8.5 Billion.

You're putting faith in a false government number that isn't accurate, it's manufactured. This is the same government that lies about trade and tells our citizens "free trade is good for America" when it's the complete opposite, that lies about immigration and tells our citizens "illegal aliens do the jobs Americans won't do" when Americans are being fired and replaced with illegal aliens, that lies about unemployment that tells our citizens our unemployment rate is only 5.1% when it's 3 times that number due to the number of people who after looking for work for so long finally gave up doing so.

My point was you're hanging your hat on a false number that isn't true. I gave you the link to show you why it is patently false, a number that is higher during the recession years than their number for 2001, at the height of our economy and tax revenue based on income, which is a mathematical impossibility. Our economy collapsed and stayed that way for years, yet the IRS claims more tax was evaded which means more tax was owed but not paid during those years than in 2001.

You can't get blood from a turnip. When the incomes aren't there because the economy isn't producing the net income to generate the tax, then there is no evasion, it's just no income means no tax.

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Originally Posted by ALIPAC

If this is true and being accurately reported it is sad news to hear. Trump is talking about a war on Christians and how Mexico does not like WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) and as such he is identifying himself as a protestant... but to have never asked God for forgiveness of sins.. that is a huge departure from Christianity.

Are we not all called to be very humble before God?

W

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Religion is a very personal thing, and how one practices their religion is their business. Muslims pray 5 times a day, yet think nothing of goading a child into a vest of bombs to go blow up a building and kill people on a suicide mission. We have Christian police officers who probably pray and ask for forgiveness all the time who kill unarmed black people. We have Christians in our Pentagon telling our soldiers in Afghanistan to look the other way while young boys are raped by Afghan leaders. We all know the scandal of the Christians in the Catholic Church who not only raped young kids, they covered it up. We have Christians in key coaching positions who do the same thing. The less religion applied to others instead of oneself is a better path than trying to judge someone for political service based on their personal religious practices, seems to me.

Jesus said in Matthew 7:1. Judge not, lest ye be judged.

I have actually been listening to my not so political friends and the friends of my grandchildren and I am finding their number one concern is what they consider to be an attack on christian values and christian beliefs. I am seeing more and more young people who were not church goers getting together and having Bible study. These are the college educated young people who are doing their own research to find their answers. More and more I am finding that these young people seem to like and relate to Ben Carson.

Judy wrote:

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You're putting faith in a false government number that isn't accurate, it's manufactured.

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You have absolutely no way of knowing if the number is factual or not. You're voicing an opinion and attempting to pass it off as an actual fact. Just saying ......

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Originally Posted by ALIPAC

If this is true and being accurately reported it is sad news to hear. Trump is talking about a war on Christians and how Mexico does not like WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) and as such he is identifying himself as a protestant... but to have never asked God for forgiveness of sins.. that is a huge departure from Christianity.

Are we not all called to be very humble before God?

W

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Well, if we were going to be "Christian" about the subject of immigration one could even argue that we should turn the other cheek and just let illegal immigrants come in here, and work us over for all we got. I CAN separate out faith and political policy a bit though, and say that a nation has an inherent right to define its borders. Now Trump?---To me he was basically the anti Christ, due to his basic unethical behavior of prodding people to gamble more, and lots of vice also goes along with gambling centers. Basically a Sodom and Gomorrah scene. Plus he walked off on debts, and is arrogant and mouthy---All of these major sins.

But the gloves have come off in US politics anyway. Liberals will constantly distort what you say (lying, false reporting), they abuse the government with lawsuits (defying ruling authorities);they promote vices and perverted behavior (like homosexuality and beast like personal practices), they corrupt children (should be drowned with a millstone); they divide people (the worst sin according to Dante: sowing discord). And when we have had some street protests, the libs will actually come right up to you and make threatening gestures and repulsive comments. They actually could be arrested and jailed under Disorderly Conduct charges.

So Trump is an arrogant, impetuous, calculating bully? Probably what we need, and I think he also is a fast learner.

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Originally Posted by Judy

What are you saying? I didn't paint anyone as an "anti-big government hero". Republicans have always opposed the income tax, we've opposed it vehemently since it was instituted by Democrats in 1913. We spend more money funding the IRS to process paperwork and invade people's lives than we spend on EPA to clean up and protect our environment.

The annual budget for the IRS in 2016 will be $14 Billion.

The annual budget for the EPA in 2016 will be $8.5 Billion.

You're putting faith in a false government number that isn't accurate, it's manufactured. This is the same government that lies about trade and tells our citizens "free trade is good for America" when it's the complete opposite, that lies about immigration and tells our citizens "illegal aliens do the jobs Americans won't do" when Americans are being fired and replaced with illegal aliens, that lies about unemployment that tells our citizens our unemployment rate is only 5.1% when it's 3 times that number due to the number of people who after looking for work for so long finally gave up doing so.

My point was you're hanging your hat on a false number that isn't true. I gave you the link to show you why it is patently false, a number that is higher during the recession years than their number for 2001, at the height of our economy and tax revenue based on income, which is a mathematical impossibility. Our economy collapsed and stayed that way for years, yet the IRS claims more tax was evaded which means more tax was owed but not paid during those years than in 2001.

You can't get blood from a turnip. When the incomes aren't there because the economy isn't producing the net income to generate the tax, then there is no evasion, it's just no income means no tax.

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Judy, your answer is veering all over the place. I'm not going to argue this further past this point. We can talk about maybe finding a better tax policy, and I definitely think we could do much better--and in the process eliminate the self defeating bureaucracy that we have now for collecting taxes. Does this give a person the moral right to not pay because the system is bad? A person can always say that "the system is bad" and justify not paying then. But my statement addressed moral hypocrisy, also: i.e. Can we say "Disobeying tax laws is OK, but disobeying immigration law ( even though you may be impoverished or fearing for your family's lives) is bad?" That would really get conservatives called out as hypocrites, even though those doing the finger pointing are hypocritical as well. Now...I would like to see someone like Michele Bachman address this tax collection gap; it's her specialty. But she covertly sides with conservative tax resisters anyway...and further, smiles all the way to the bank. Do I have to point out some other reasons why conservatives lose elections, then?

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Originally Posted by Captainron

Judy, your answer is veering all over the place. I'm not going to argue this further past this point. We can talk about maybe finding a better tax policy, and I definitely think we could do much better--and in the process eliminate the self defeating bureaucracy that we have now for collecting taxes. Does this give a person the moral right to not pay because the system is bad? A person can always say that "the system is bad" and justify not paying then. But my statement addressed moral hypocrisy, also: i.e. Can we say "Disobeying tax laws is OK, but disobeying immigration law ( even though you may be impoverished or fearing for your family's lives) is bad?" That would really get conservatives called out as hypocrites, even though those doing the finger pointing are hypocritical as well. Now...I would like to see someone like Michele Bachman address this tax collection gap; it's her specialty. But she covertly sides with conservative tax resisters anyway...and further, smiles all the way to the bank. Do I have to point out some other reasons why conservatives lose elections, then?

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I've not said anything about whether it's right for someone to not pay their taxes. That's between them and their government. My issue was with the number of $500 billion in tax evasion. I don't believe that number. That number isn't true. You think I'm veering all over the place? No, I'm simply sticking to the point I made which is that the $500 billion is wrong. It's not an actual number, it's an estimated number based on a model based on assumptions based on a poll. It's not an actual number, it's a manufactured number, a fabricated number, a created number, it's not a real number. It's not a number where the IRS has audited taxpayers, determined tax owed and not paid, and is owing. It's a made-up number.

In order for there to be $500 billion in income taxes owed in evaded tax, that means there's at least $1.5 trillion or more in untaxed but taxable net income or profits out there that isn't being reported. All major corporations are audited every year. All wages are taxed by employers. 72 million people are on Medicaid and have to show their income tax returns to sign up for it. Another 60 million are on Social Security. Just do the numbers .... there is no way this $500 billion number is correct. Virtually all income is reported if not by the person earning it, the person paying it. It is not possible. So, I'm just going to leave it there.

The only reason it matters in this conversation, is because it's a false number that can not be relied upon in any way, shape or form, as a revenue generator to fill the budget gap or pay down the debt. Sure, there's some figure out there, even people who file tax returns cheat. They cheat on charitable donations, they don't report cash income they earn on the side of their primary job, but look around, the people who do that do not owe $500 billion in unpaid income tax. They cheat because they can't live on their wages, so they work hard on the side doing something else and are paid in cash to run down and pay the utility bill before they cut it off, and there's nothing left to send to the government to pay down the national debt.

So do you really want to spend $50,000 in an arrest and prosecution of someone earning $20,000 a year that his employer reports and withholds income tax from, who picks up another $2000 a year doing handyman work to pay the utility bill or fix the car so he can get to work?

The IRS is doing our country a tremendous disservice by circulating this false information. Revenues don't match our expenditures on the federal level because we're wasting too much money expending on things for which we have no result and see no benefit and the economy despite all the lies from DC telling US everything is wonderful when we know it isn't. Incomes are down, and when incomes are down, so are tax revenues, so unless you cut the spending or find a new way to collect revenue that actually helps keep the economy roaring and pushes incomes up, there's going to be a deficit and a growing national debt with absolutely no way to fix it under the current income tax scheme.

Not once in 102 years has the federal income tax scheme paid all the bills. Not once. There were a few times when it got close but the rates were too high to maintain the economy which is why our companies started leaving our nation for foreign shores, taking their great jobs, wages, benefits, investment, infrastructure and technology with them.

In 2012, 47% of US taxpayers owed no tax and paid no tax. That number is probably 50% today. The top 25% is high on the audit list, with much at stake and few would dare risk a tax evasion event.

So, please don't ask me or anyone else to believe that the remaining 25% in the middle income class of our country owes the IRS $500 billion in evaded taxes. It just isn't true. It's a mathematical impossibility.

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Originally Posted by MW

Judy wrote:



You have absolutely no way of knowing if the number is factual or not. You're voicing an opinion and attempting to pass it off as an actual fact. Just saying ......

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I know for a FACT the number is not FACTUAL.

The IRS didn't use fact, they use a model, based on assumptions, they apply to a poll. That's an estimate, not fact. And that's a fact.

I took the time to provide you all with a link about how the IRS comes up with this number, the "methodology" and you can read from that to learn that it is not fact and there are all types of problems with their methodology.

When almost half of US taxpayers don't owe or pay any tax to begin with, and the top 25% are high targets for IRS audits, all use accountants and professional to make sure they file, they file right and don't make any mistakes, that leaves the middle 25% of US taxpayers, who all either work for someone or own their own companies and file all types of income tax reports that makes it almost impossible for them to cheat. If anyone with 2 live brain cells still connected wants to believe that this group of middle income earners owes the US government $500 billion in evaded tax, then well, they're free to believe any fairy-tale the government wants to hand out to them to turn them against each other.