"Overlapping government programs cost billions".....

[MindMover]

Who would have ever thought that we have overlapping government programs....!!!!



http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/post/gao-overlapping-government-programs-cost-billions/2012/02/27/gIQAnSPdeR_blog.html?wprss=rss_politics

[tk2kewl]

1. I know where there is plenty of overlap that needs eliminating:

Pentagon, DHS, FBI, Secret Service, CIA, NSA, ATF, DEA

[2pooped2pop]

2. good answer

and exactly how this should be framed.

[cstanleytech]

8. Um nope those dont really overlap much if at all or atleast some of them dont like the fbi is

for domestic issues, pentagon is the military, cia or the nsa (cant remember which one) cannot or atleast isnt supposed to conduct operations inside the US.
Now DEA and ATF you might have a good argument for into rolling them into say the FBI.
Now what redundant programs imo is the VA, they should do away with it and just roll the veterans over into medicare as well as creating a national healthcare system but I dont foresee them doing that because the republicans are suckups to the military and have been for decades atleast so they would oppose doing away with the VA.

[quakerboy]

3. Any assertion that begins with a picture of coburn

should definitely be questioned.

Otherwise I would be tempted to say duh.

[JoePhilly]

4. Overlapping functions exist in every large corporation and also cost billions.

Large organizations, whether public or private, have significant overlap efforts. It is a rather natural characteristic of larger organizations.

Its important to note that this is not always a bad thing. In many cases, the "overlapping" efforts overlap in their goal, but they are each taking different approaches to the same problem, and at some point, one of those effots will be determined to be the best path forward. And the others go away or are absorbed.

In a sense, it is an "internal" competition.

The idea that large organizations are ultra efficient and there is little overlap of effort is false. The world is not black and white. And organizations with very different mandates can find themselves creating overlapping efforts to deal with amorphous problems that span organizational boundaries.

[msongs]

5. army, navy, marines, air force etc nt

[Scruffy1]

6. You get an A in the quick answer department. n/t

[sofa king]

7. And they're all underfunded.

I recall helping to cobble together federal funding to keep some absolutely essential medical facilities open on an Indian reservation, and attending a meeting in which there were representatives from DHHS, IHS, BIA, Interior, Commerce, staff from an entire state Congressional delegation, and the President of a tribe, all serviced by a cloud of lawyers and paralegals.

Collectively, their salaries far outweighed the costs being debated. But no single one of those entities I named above had anything close to the few hundred thousand dollars that was needed.

It was the end of a fiscal year not long after the government had been shut down a couple of times, and far more complicated than I describe. But what I personally witnessed was desperately underfunded agencies "overlapping" because none of them had any money.

And those were the good old days!