There is a lot of talk about getting rid of "waste, fraud and abuse", but precious little public examination of what those words actually mean - or how to determine whether a given expenditure counts as one of those things. Sure, most people want "folks who need help" or "people who work hard" to benefit from "charity" or make "good salaries", but those just introduce more phrases we haven't defined. Sure, we all know what they mean in some sense, but where is the boundary between someone "taking advantage of others' charity" and "getting the bare minimum they deserve"? At what specific points does a salary + benefits package progress from "token charity" to "living wage" to "decent" to "respectable" to "generous" to "extravagant" to "abusive & exploitative"? Under what specific conditions, for what specific people, is a payout or benefit appropriate - whether of cash, medical care, food assistance, goods, or a policy maker's time & attention?
Answering those questions is the business of government - of politicians and politically involved people. Lawyers and judges and bureaucrats and police and investigators spend their careers arguing over them. Politicians are tasked with trying to put the answers into law, and finding ways to make broad opinions both consistent & legally enforceable. Economists and philosophers and professionals of all sorts try to illuminate the trade-offs and make greater goods available to greater numbers of people.
But folks who want to use a chainsaw to get rid of "waste, fraud and abuse" without taking the time to define those terms are, at best, wasting your time. Either they don't understand the consequences of their actions, or they don't care, or they're hoping you don't understand what they're trying to do.
So let's take a moment to examine how it should work, and what's actually required.
Consider a hypothetical benefit. "Wheelchairs for disabled veterans" is a popular benefit, but we could equally talk about "food for the poor" or "health care for the working class" or "state-funded high school education." Which benefit we talk about matters for the details and who your proponents & opponents are, but not for the overall process. I'm going to stick with "wheelchairs for disabled vets" for this article so that I can speak a bit more concretely.
First up, you need to decide who gets the benefit, and how much it's going to be. Do all veterans get wheelchairs? What if they have some use of their legs, but can mostly make do with a cane? Does their age matter? Length of service? Time since separation? What about a General Discharge or Other Than Honorable Discharge? Folks who served with honor but were pushed out by policy changes? Folks who wanted to serve but were denied roles for which they were qualified through no fault of their own? Does it matter if they were injured in the line of duty? Or maybe not "on duty" but still as a result of military service? How nice a wheelchair do they get? Manual? Motorized? How often and how well can they have it repaired or replaced? Should routine maintenance & cleaning be included? Do combat veterans get better wheelchairs than those who never saw combat? Is the wheelchair delivered to their house, or do they need to arrange pickup at a central location? Does the vet need to personally sign the receipt and take delivery, or can they have a friend or family member do so on their behalf? Someone has to think through all those options - likely several people will discuss the topic, and they probably won't all agree on every point. Available budget, technology, and current recruitment levels will all influence those discussions. No matter what you decide, you'll probably have someone tell you you're wasting money. Simultaneously, someone else will say the benefits aren't generous enough. And in the end, some group of politicians will sign something into law, making art of the possible.
Next, assume you've got a definition of who deserves a benefit, and how much that benefit should be. The next step is supposedly simple: give those benefits out to the people who fit your criteria. This step is also fraught: Someone will try to claim benefits in excess of what you've awarded - whether through ignorance or malice. Maybe it's not the veteran who needs the wheelchair, but his non-veteran twin brother. Maybe one of the beneficiaries is regularly selling the wheelchair (or replacement parts) he gets from the VA and having the government eat the cost. Maybe it's someone with a fake ID, or the vet isn't as disabled as he claims to be. Call this a "False Positive" in that your system decides he deserves the benefit, but it's wrong. On the other side of things, maybe you've got a veteran who has lost both legs and meets all your criteria, but can't get to the VA to pick up the wheelchair, or doesn't know it's available, or the wheelchair keeps getting broken or stolen by his roommate and the VA won't replace it any more. Maybe he has such bad PTSD that he doesn't even want to see reminders of the military, officers, or bureaucrats where he broke. Maybe he's homeless and can't take delivery because he doesn't have a permanent address. Call this a "False Negative" since the system won't provide the benefit to someone whom it's supposed to.
Both False Positives and False Negatives are costs associated with _any_ program. Either you're spending money you shouldn't (False Positive), or you're not getting the expected benefits for spending you planned to do (False Negative). You can decide that one is a larger problem than the other, and shift the criteria, making it easier or harder to qualify for the benefit - easier or harder for a veteran to get a wheelchair in this example. You're probably never going to completely eliminate _either_ form of error, leading to persistent claims of "waste, fraud and abuse" from dishonest critics. To shrink both False Negatives and False Positives simultaneously, you'll need to spend resources investigating edge cases, enforcing the rules, and actively looking for ways to save money. Beware the folks who want to cut enforcement at the same time they cut services and complain about waste, fraud & abuse: They may very well be creating more of the waste they claim to oppose.
The next time someone talks about "waste, fraud & abuse", demand to know what specific evidence they have of those problems and what specific changes they're making to eliminate the problems without also cutting valuable services.