WHO PAYS FOR FEDERAL WASTE AND FRAUD? All of us do, because hundreds of billions of tax dollars are lost every year to waste and fraud in the federal bureaucracy. It’s one of those issues on which everybody pretty much agrees, but nobody has bothered to quantify its cost to individual Americans. Until now, that is.

James Agresti and his colleagues at Just Facts did a deep data dive on the issue and, as I report today for The Washington Stand, found that every one of this country’s 132 million households will in the normal course of things lose more than $140,000.

And because that figure only applies to losses due to fraudulent activities like Medicare benefits going to non-existent hospice patients, the ultimate total will grow when the impact of losses due to waste and other forms of irresponsible management are calculated.