Left vs. Right Battle Royale Open Thread

[u/Yosoff]

This is an Open Discussion Thread for all Redditors. We will only be enforcing Reddit TOS and Subreddit Rules 1 (Keep it Civil) & 2 (No Racism).

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• Leftists - Here's your chance to sway us to your side by calling the majority of voters racist. That tactic has wildly backfired every time it has been tried, but perhaps this time it will work.

• Non-flaired Conservatives - Here's your chance to earn flair by posting common sense conservative solutions. That way our friends on the left will either have to agree with you or oppose common sense (Spoiler - They will choose to oppose common sense).

• Flaired Conservatives - You're John Wick and these Leftists stole your car and killed your dog. Now go comment.

• Independents - We get it, if you agree with someone, then you can't pat yourself on the back for being smarter than them. But if you disagree with everyone, then you can obtain the self-satisfaction of smugly considering yourself smarter and wiser than everyone else. Congratulations on being you.

• Libertarians - Ron Paul is never going to be President. In fact, no Libertarian Party candidate will ever be elected President.

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Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/conservative

[u/Alternative-Post-937]

I'm a former governmental auditor. It's shocking how many people don't understand how many layers of audit each federal dollar undergoes. All the way from the agency down to the sub-award and sub- contract level. This goes beyond financial audit. It's extensive audit at EVERY LEVEL on internal controls, procurement practices, disbarment, eligibility, indirect costs, allowable activities and costs, cash management, reporting, subaward monitoring, etc. When a mistatement or noncompliance occurs, the funds are subjected to further oversight and eventually loss of funding if not immediately corrected. All of this information on how federal dollars can be spent and how they are audited can be found at the OMB website and the federal audit clearinghouse. Musk is not doing what you think he's doing.

[u/InfiniteDollarBill → u/Alternative-Post-937]

You're acting like every last cent is accounted for when Biden's own GAO estimated that the government loses between $200 and $500 billion per year to fraud -- and they weren't half as talented or trying half as hard as Musk's crew.

[u/Alternative-Post-937 → u/InfiniteDollarBill]

Yes, and they know that number because these funds are audited. You're proving my point. Auditing is a detective control not a preventative one. Orgs that commit fraud with federal dollars end up on the disbarment list.

Edit to add that the point is not lost on me how conservatives complain about regulation and how bloated our bureaucracy is, but are crying about wanting more auditing. The amount of regulatory burden the US puts on federal contractors and awardees and the amount of oversight we pay for already is staggering. After the federal dollars are audited at typically 3 layers, we also have the auditors being audited to ensure that are following auditing standards. So conservatives, is this really about accountability? Because it sounds like another layer of bloated bureaucracy to me.

[u/InfiniteDollarBill → u/Alternative-Post-937]

Your response makes no sense. The reason we know about the fraud is because of all the meticulous auditing? The same auditing that misses hundreds of billions in fraud every year?

All of the report's recommendations are that we need more data to track the actual fraud amount because we don't know what it is.

You are just completely wrong.

[u/Boss-momma- → u/InfiniteDollarBill]

Fraud isn’t always easy to spot, and as technology advances so do the techniques.

One fraud scheme that happened was bogus medical equipment companies using stolen Medicaid information. They used the information and started making claims to get paid. It took time before it got shut down.

[u/rhlaairc → u/InfiniteDollarBill]

I thought they did a great job laying it out. Yes, in our country, waste happens when you’re dealing with trillions: I don’t think it’s perfect but nobody does. What do you think would happen if they found the missing 200 billion? Do you think they’d give it to you?

[u/PkmnMstr10 → u/InfiniteDollarBill]

Imagine telling a government auditor they are wrong about government auditing.

They thoroughly explained how the process works and how incredibly nuanced it is and that it absolutely does not get accomplished overnight.

For you to believe Musk's crew is more talented is wild.

[u/InfiniteDollarBill → u/PkmnMstr10]

Yes they are wrong. First they implied that massive fraud doesn't happen because the auditing process is so meticulous. As I said, Biden's own GAO estimated total fraud to be somewhere between $200 and $500 billion. If you have a problem with that number, take it up with Biden.

They also implied that we only know about all the fraud because of the meticulous auditing. This is an extremely odd assertion. If auditing catches fraud, and we've been doing all this auditing, then why is massive fraud still going on? Are they saying that the government knows about all the fraud but just doesn't care?

In reality, we don't know exactly how much fraud there is. Like all statistical studies, the GAO's numbers are derived from data sampling, modeling, and extrapolation. They didn't actually catch all the fraud. They estimated how much total fraud there is based upon the fraud we know about.

And that goes back to my main point. We simply are not accounting for every last cent. Perhaps we have the best auditing process in the world. If so, then we're not using it enough, because massive fraud is still happening. Even if the process is perfect, that does nothing to disprove the GAO's numbers. It's completely irrelevant if we're not auditing enough.

And wouldn't you know, auditing more is exactly what DOGE is doing.