Government Accountability Office news stories on Newser

RNC: Obama Fraudulently Using Air Force One

Kevin Spak — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:26:05 CDT

Republicans think Barack Obama's trips on Air Force One amount to nothing less than fraud. RNC Chair Reince Priebus has sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office asking it to investigate Obama's recent travel, alleging that the events he's traveling to have been "widely reported to be equivalent to...

Watchdog: Airport Errors Soaring

Mary Papenfuss — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 02:19:00 CDT

The number of reported air traffic controller errors has jumped, along with the number of unauthorized planes, people, or vehicles on runways, according to a government report released yesterday. Incidents of planes flying too close to one another have nearly doubled in the last three years due to controller mistakes...

US Can't Trace Sold Nuclear Material

Kevin Spak — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 13:20:30 CDT

For all the Obama administration’s talk of securing nuclear stockpiles, the US has no ability to track 5,900 pounds of “weapons usable” nuclear material that it has sold to foreign governments over the years, according to a little-noticed Government Accountability Office report last week picked up by Wired . Instead,...

Homeland Security Blowing $300M on Sketchy Scanners

Kevin Spak — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:56:33 CDT

Homeland Security plans to buy 400 new radiation detection machines, even though it’s skipped its own internal requirements to test them first, the Government Accountability Office complained in a report today. These Advanced Spectroscopic Portal machines have a checkered past, the Washington Post reports: In January, the National Academy of...

Congress: US Wasting Billions in War on Drugs

Kevin Spak — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 07:57:01 CDT

The Obama administration has essentially no evidence that the billions spent combating the drug trade in Latin America have done anything to stem the flow of narcotics into the US, according to a pair of scathing new congressional reports. “We are wasting tax dollars and throwing money at a problem...

Time to Get Rid of Paper Dollars: GAO

Kevin Spak — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 10:18:00 CST

It's time to kiss your dollar bills goodbye—or at least, it should be, as far as the Government Accountability Office is concerned. The GAO has once again called on Congress, the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury to yank paper dollars out of circulation and replace them with dollar coins,...

Almost 10% of Medicare Payments Improper

Kevin Spak — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 09:11:33 CST

The federal government lost around $48 billion to fraudulent and improper Medicare claims last year—which made up nearly 10% of all payments the program doled out, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. And even that figure might be on the low side, because it doesn’t...

Feds Often Have 75 Programs Doing One Thing: Review

Kevin Spak — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:08:57 CST

The government is positively brimming with overlapping programs and offices, potentially producing billions in waste, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. There are, for example, 82 federal programs for improving teacher quality, 80 for helping poor people with their transportation needs, 47 for job training...

Discharging Gays Cost Pentagon $193M

Rob Quinn — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 07:51:32 CST

Recruiting and training replacements for gay service members discharged under the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy cost the Pentagon a whopping $193 million from 2004 to 2009, according to the Government Accountability Office. The analysis found that 1,442 of the 3,664 service members dismissed for being gay...