Issue Position: Waste and Fraud

Issue Position

Waste is one of the biggest things that motivate me to run for Government. The levels of waste in the Government keeps growing year after year, and few seem to take it on.

Part of the problem is entrenched fiefdoms set up in Government programs, part of the problem is 'Making History' projects that are not worth undertaking. There is of course a lot of other sources. So many problems, and so few taking them on.

Well I plan to fight a lot of the waste. I will personally audit a number of the expenditures we do, I will tackle the bloated agencies, I will stop the Toll Bridge to Bankruptcy, and I will fight to prevent them from returning. My plan is simple... for agencies with issues, I plan to take two dollars out for every dollar in waste I find after giving them enough time to identify their own waste. You see this is a way to get them to give up some of their issues before I even show up. This is called an incentive to be responsible.

Now some are going to say "but your views may be different". I am saying the toilet seat that cost $100, the car rental that could have been done cheaper, the installation of equipment that will never see enough use to validate their effort.

Oregon needs to reduce wasteful spending. By far the biggest wasteful spending I have found so far is the I-5 Replacement Bridge. I call this the Bridge to Bankruptcy. An engineer in Vancouver (source) has come up with an offer that would cost about $500 million the last I heard of it. The current proposed cost is $3 billion. (source)

So the first day in office I could literally save this State $2.5 Billion dollars. This is an example of the age of spending, which we must end. Yes there are those who want light-rail. And the counter proposal actually includes light rail.

However this is not about light-rail, it is about wanting a Toll Bridge. Toll bridges hurt the poor the most, but will also adversely affect businesses that frequently travel the I-5 bridge. So I will be stopping a thing that can damage our economy as well.


Fraud
Fraud is a serious issue. Medicare fraud is estimated to cost billions of dollars annually. Food Stamp fraud, welfare fraud, and more exist. Fraud is a wrong upon all of society when perpetuated against the Government. We need to put these people in jail and make them regret doing the fraud at all.

There are other types of fraud as well. When a person steals another person's identity, they are committing the ultimate fraud. Damage is often much more severe than comparable nonviolent crimes, such as larceny. A person could spend years correcting the damage while living with their devastated credit rate. While identity theft does not involve the physical harm of violent crimes, the extensive and long term consequences place identity theft on a scale much more severe than similar crimes.

Identity theft is on the rise. More and more it becomes a tool for the criminal who seeks to hide from their crimes to commit more crimes using our identities. We need firm and strong laws which show clearly "THIS WILL NOT BE TOLERATED". To which I propose a special new law.

I call it the increased punishment leads to reduced levels method. Simply put the punishment will fit the percentage of people involved. The higher the percentage, the higher the time. We will start with a fixed time, and a fixed number of 'crimes' of that nature. If the number of crimes exceeds the 'allowed amount' then the percentage over is the percentage increase on the time the person will serve.

The design is to prevent people from doing the crime. It can be tailored (with math and effort) to make the total numbers go dramatically down, thus freeing us from this burden.

This new proposal may end up serving as a benchmark for the rest of the nation. I expect this to survive all challenges due to the fact that States can set the punishment of criminals for what amount of time they wish.

Source