Leaks in the federal budget

Feds spend at least $890,000 on fees for empty accounts – The Washington Post.  (Every time the federal government sets up a grant, it opens an account.  When the grant money is spent, the account can’t be closed, according to government rules, until a full accounting of the program has been made.  That takes time and money.  So some 13,712 accounts with no money in them still exist, at the cost of $65 per year.)

The IRS paid $11 billion in faulty Earned Income Tax Credits last year.  (Not because taxpayers did anything wrong but because the rules for the EITC are so complicated that IRS officials calculated them incorrectly.)

In $75 billion program to prevent mortgage defaults, 46% of participants are defaulting.