Why doesn’t Washington cut waste?

WASHINGTON - Federal watchdogs told Senate lawmakers this week that thousands of their recommendations for eliminating millions of wasted dollars every year get swept under the rug and simply never implemented.

'While much progress has been made on many of our recommendations, other critical recommendations to improve efficiency and effectiveness across the federal government remain unimplemented,” Gene Dodaro, the U.S. comptroller general and chief of the Government Accountability Office told a Senate panel on regulatory affairs and federal management at a hearing on why agencies do not always listen to their watchdogs.

Dodaro, who testifies regularly before Congress on how his staff has uncovered waste and inefficiency in government and what agencies can do about it, said that in the last fiscal year his auditors have received requests from 97 percent of Senate and House committees to ferret out wasteful spending.

The pattern is similar. He testifies about what his auditors found, which come to about 1,800 areas for savings every year. Many suggestions, about 80 percent, are implemented.

And others linger for years, he said, a whopping 4,800 of them still on the books as of last month.

Inspectors general, who play a similar role in uncovering waste, fraud and abuse that can often result in excess spending, have similar frustrations.

Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department watchdog and chief of the federal council of inspectors general, testified that IGs 'recover substantial funds” as a result of their investigations, amounting to about $18 on every dollar their offices spend.

The potential savings came to nearly $4.3 billion in questioned costs last year and more $9.5 billion that could be put to better use by government agencies, he said.

Lawmakers' concern is bipartisan. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., the panel's chairman and author of 'Federal Fumbles,” his guide to 100 examples of federal waste, said GAO's recommendations have saved U.S. taxpayers $74.7 billion since 2003.

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., the panel's top Democrat, said, 'We're not here to place blame on any particular entity. We're here to stand with the GAO, offices of inspectors general and agencies as a partner in making the federal government more effective and efficient.”

Some of GAO's counsel can seem arcane. But auditors are suggesting real tweaks to how agencies do things every day that can mean real savings to taxpayers, officials and lawmakers agreed.

For example, auditors reported that the Defense Department's massive F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program Fighter 'continues to encounter significant technical problems,” Dodaro testified, including engine and bulkhead failures, which require design changes at the same time aircraft production is well underway. DoD plans to steeply increase F-35 funding over the next five years and projects that it will need between $14 billion and $15 billion annually for nearly a decade.

GAO recommended that defense officials conduct a 'comprehensive affordability analysis” of the F-35 program's procurement plan, Dodaro said. DOD agreed with the recommendation, although the agency maintains that it accomplishes this through its annual budget process. Auditors say a more thorough analysis is necessary 'to accurately account for the future technical and funding uncertainty” the program faces, he said.

Dodaro said his auditors have also made many recommendations for savings to Medicare, urging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) three years ago to improve the accuracy of adjustments to diagnostic coding practices between Medicare Advantage (MA) and Medicare Fee-For-Service.

Auditors found that the program was making excess payments to health plans totaling $3.2 billion to $5.1 billion 2010 through 2012. CMS said it would take auditors' findings into consideration, but as of April 2015 the agency has not established a time frame for improving the accuracy of its adjustments, he said.

Federal agencies are not required to follow recommendations to change their practices. But GAO has gotten savvier in recent years about prodding them to act, keeping an online database of all suggestions that are still sitting around.

Agencies also face obstacles in making savings. Horowitz said the FBI has vacancies in critical cybersecurity positions, partly because government salaries cannot compete with those of industry and partly because applicants must submit to a security background check, Federal Computer Week reported.

And a new administration on the way with new priorities is likely to slow progress on GAO's long list of savings that haven't yet materialized, officials said.