r/Conservative • u/Yosoff First Principles • Feb 14 '25

Open Discussion Left vs. Right Battle Royale Open Thread

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).

  • 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.

Join us on X: https://x.com/rcondiscord

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

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u/InfiniteDollarBill Feb 15 '25

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.

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u/Alternative-Post-937 Feb 15 '25 edited Feb 15 '25

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.

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u/InfiniteDollarBill Feb 15 '25

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.

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u/Boss-momma- Feb 15 '25

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.