This Bernie Sanders exchange with US Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney, is interesting because Mulvaney shows some of his cruel priorities which favor giving more billions to billionaires while putting poor people at risk of freezing in cold weather.
Mulvaney is referring to the GAO study in 2010 (nearly eight years ago) which looked into fraud and waste in the home heating subsidy program known as LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program). He talks about the finding that 11,000 people who were deceased applied for the assistance as if that is a reason for the nearly 2 million people who were alive and needed the assistance to no longer get the assistance. Sanders rightly takes down for that Dickensian cruelty.
But let's look at the GAO study and see how solid that 11,000 figure is and whether Mulvaney is over-interpreting data. Here is a quote form pages 5-6 of the study regarding the bad things the GAO found:
* Deceased individuals. The identities of over 11,000 deceased individuals
were used as applicants or household members for LIHEAP benefits. Our
analysis matching LIHEAP data to the SSA’s death master file found these
individuals were deceased before the LIHEAP application date. Benefits involved with these applications totaled about $3.9 million for the year we reviewed.
* Incarcerated individuals. For the four states that provided reliable incarceration data, we found 725 instances where the identities of
individuals incarcerated in state prisons were used as applicants or
household members. These identities were associated with about $370,000
of LIHEAP benefits even though these individuals were in prison at the
time of the application and thus ineligible for benefits.
* Federal employees exceeding income thresholds. Matching LIHEAP data
with federal civilian payroll records, we identified about 1,100 federal
employees whose federal salary exceeded the maximum income threshold
at the time of their application. The benefit payments associated with
those applications totaled $671,000.
Because LIHEAP is a block grant program, the potential fraudulent and
improper activities associated with these thousands of cases have an
adverse effect on the program. Specifically, these fraudulent and improper
activities will either reduce the amount of energy assistance provided to
recipients or prevent legitimate recipients from receiving the energy
assistance because the funds have been used.
The report, at the start, noted in part as well:
About 9 percent of households receiving benefits—totaling $116
million—in the selected states contained invalid identity information, such as
Social Security numbers, names, or dates of birth. Although some of these
cases are likely due to simple errors such as typos or incomplete data,
thousands of other cases show strong indications of fraud and improper
benefits.
Let us understand something. When we look carefully at the report language, we see that 11,000 deceased individuals were used as applicant names for the subsidy. So when the poor person applicant died, did that mean someone not poor was using the subsidy? Do we know how many of those applicants were living with a person who was also poor, so that the subsidy was still being used for people who needed the subsidy? The study did not go that far in its analysis. Neither did the study ever ask, So if the applicant was in prison at the time of the application, or re-application, were there no poor people in the home the prisoner left behind?
So the GAO's statement that there are "strong indications" of fraud in those areas is a guess on the part of the GAO. My own knowledge of sociology tells me poor people in poor areas live most often with other poor people. And poor people suffer from as much of a lack of sophistication in filling out forms as their other problems. So it may well be that a majority of these cases are not cases of people living in mansions or driving Mercedes using the subsidies, though that was definitely found in some cases.
Another statement from the study, about the program being a "block grant" program, speaks to something that has long been a peeve of mine. Conservatives, right wingers and neo-liberals in our nation love "block grant" programs more often than not. But that means the federal government gives the money to the States and protectorates (Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, etc.) and then the States and protectorates have to separately administer the program and the US government has to oversee each of the States and protectorates. This creates a terrible lack of uniformity and waters down the effectiveness of what people understand to be a federal program. Also, let's face it: some States or protectorates will do better than others in tracking people, and checking Social Security and other verification information, just as we saw the GAO audit. It is why I do not like block grants for the most part, as too many States and protectorates do too poor a job compared to having a federal program the federal government administers. There is less bureaucracy involved when something is a straight up federal program where it is one government responsible for administration compared to one plus 50 governments and then other governmental entities in places such as the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, etc.
For Mulvaney to promote the elimination of the LIHEAP on the basis of the 2010 GAO study shows the shallowness in which he approaches his position as Budget Director, and the cruelty of his public policy prescriptions. If one audited the Koch Bros. own corporate or business organization budgets, one could easily find the same percentage of fraud, waste, etc. To speak of eliminating the home heating fuel subsidy program because of the 2010 GAO study without even asking what has been done to improve its efficiency since then, again, shows how much Mulvaney would rather govern from a bumper sticker or cable news, than true governance.
