@Olivier5,
This is the kind of thing that Trump would get under control if he was the actual bureaucrat writing the checks:
Quote: A survey of the general population has found that more than 80% are prepared to cheat on welfare.
Welfare fraud is widespread, but in most cases it is committed by people who are unable to make ends meet. In a 2012 study, 30 of 34 interviewed welfare recipients admitted fraud. A 1988 study of 50 Chicago women on welfare found that 80% worked either full-time or part-time, but none of them reported their income to the welfare office. Surveys conducted during the 1970s in Seattle and Denver showed that 50% of recipients admitted to "cheating" in order to get by financially.
In 2016, the Office of Investigations for the Social Security Administration received 143 385 allegations and opened 8 048 cases. 1 162 persons were convicted for crime. Recoveries amounted to $52,6 million, fines to $4,5 million, settlements/judgements to $1,7 million and restitution to $70 million. The estimated savings were $355,7 million.
In the first half of the fiscal year 2012, the office of the Inspector General of the Social Security Administration was able to detect frauds that cost the government over $253 million.
A few examples:
A 1977 claim by the executive director of the Illinois Legislative Advisory Committee on Public Aid stated that a Chicago woman named Linda Taylor used 14 aliases to obtain $150,000 for medical assistance, cash assistance and bonus cash food stamps.
Dorothy Woods, of the US, claimed 38 nonexistent children.[54] She was sentenced to eight years in jail.[
Esther Johnson of California was sentenced to four years in state prison in 1979 for "collecting $240,000 for more than 60 fictitious children.
Welfare fraud often reflects an idea that people have a moral right to proper financial support from the government. An Israeli study showed that 47 of 49 women on welfare openly and actively justified acts of welfare fraud, including eight persons who did not admit to committing fraud themselves
Deterrence is ineffective. Many assess the risk of being caught as minimal, and it has been suggested that a widespread lack of understanding and underprediction of the sanctions for breaking the rules may contribute to this. A study of how people would do in hypothetic situations showed large differences between various risk alternatives. More than 80% were ready to take a job on the black market and receive unemployment benefit if the risk of audit was 1/6.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_fraud
Welfare fraud is just the minute tip of the gigantic iceberg which constitutes fraud on the government. We need more prevention and less prosecution (which probably only gets 1 out of 100).
Government workers tend to just "process the papers" without thinking twice about asking even the most elementary questions. I think I recently read a story about how about $150 million in fraudulent tax refund claims were all sent to the same address, for example.
The governmental implementation is broken, not the "system." I think I have also seen stats that say that for every $1 in welfare benefits paid out, another $1 is paid for bureaucrats to distribute it. There has got to be a more efficient way, but this type of problem seems to get ignored in perpetuity. Too many salaries at stake to question it. Bureaucrats are also notorious for making sure they spend every penny in their budget, then claim they're broke, so they can get more money (now, and "next year"). It's ever-expanding in order to meet the "needs" of government civil servants, not the "needy."
