From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: GAO: U.S. Comptroller Testifies to U.S. Senate
Subcommittee on Emerging Threats & Spending Oversight

Description: In his June 14, 2022 testimony to the U.S. Senate,
Comptroller General Gene Dodaro discusses GAO's 12th annual report on
ways to enhance government efficiency and effectiveness. 

Related GAO Works: GAO-22-105301 2022 Annual Report: Additional
Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and
Achieve Billions of Dollars in Financial Benefits

[Gene Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States, speaking to the
Senate Subcomittee on Emerging Threats & Spending Oversight]

I'm very pleased to be here today to discuss our 12th annual report on
ways to enhance government efficiency and effectiveness. As was
mentioned in your opening statement, Madam Chair, the past 11 reports
that we've issued annual reports on this had about 1300 recommendations.
Congress has either fully and administration have either fully or
partially implemented 74% of those recommendations And they've led to
the cited savings that you pointed out, which include $535 billion
that's already been saved, another 21 billion that will be saved in the
coming years based upon the already implemented recommendations.

Now we think there are tens of billions of additional dollars that could
be saved in implementing the recommendations that were either partially
or not at all addressed in our previous 11 reports. And then again this
year, we have 94 new actions that we identified that could also lead to
additional savings and improvements in our government efficiency and
effectiveness.

And again this year, as our prior 11 reports have done these cover the
various spectrums of the Federal Government's activities. For example,
the Department of Energy could pursue less expensive options for
disposing of low level hazardous nuclear waste, thereby saving tens of
billions of dollars potentially. We also found that federal contracting
leaders could employ a use of metrics that we find that a cross-section
of private sector entities use to drive down costs and improve the
performance of their procurement opportunities.

This would give an additional billions of dollars in savings. Also, the
government could encourage better staffing at skilled nursing
facilities, thereby preventing very costly hospital readmissions or
emergency room visits within 30 years of excuse me, 30 days of somebody
entering a skilled nursing facility, thereby the government paying extra
on top of the daily rate for that facility. There are opportunities for
IRS to focus more attention on eliminating what has been a growing
amount of interest paid on tax refunds for various reasons.

Also, there are opportunities to reduce overpayments in the ticket to
work program at the Social Security Administration for disability
benefits. This would, is a program that's set up to help people get back
to work but if they don't make timely changes to the process, they're
overpaying these people, allowing them to keep their work benefits as
well as receiving disability benefits.

There's also opportunities at the Defense Department to reduce costs for
feeding military through food service changes that could be put in place
as well as travel reimbursements. Millions of dollars could be saved
there as well. We also have called on Congress to designate a federal
agency to be the lead and develop a national strategy for diet related
chronic health conditions.

Currently, there are over 200 federal efforts at 21 federal agencies.
There's not a coordinated national strategy. This, you know, has a lot
of consequences, both for the health of the American people, the
longevity of people living as well as additional costs borne by our
already burdened health care system. So we think this would be a good
recommendation as well.

I thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today and to
discuss our work. And I appreciate very much Senator Hassan and your and
Senator Paul's introduction of legislation to support our
recommendations. And I very much thank you for that effort and look
forward to continuing to work with this committee thus far on these
issues before.

For Senator Johnson as well. And I appreciate the Congresses,
particularly this committee's, continued interest.

[End]

For more info, see our report GAO-22-105301 at: GAO.gov