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Remember the absolutely critical Omnibus spending bill Congress muscled through at the end of last year? It was 4,000 pages that no one read and cost taxpayers $1.7 trillion.
In our Let's Cut Some Spending series, ForAmerica will chronicle parts of the 2021 and 2022 spending bills from a variety of sources that you probably don't know about - programs, grants and spending of all kinds that should have never happened in the first place and many that are still happening.
Today’s offering: $9.7 million wasted by the ATF!
Real Clear Investigations reports:
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives wasted $9.7 million by intentionally misclassifying administrators and bureaucrats as law enforcement officers, according to a letter from the Department of Justice and U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
An investigation was opened after two whistleblowers alleged the ATF was “systematically and intentionally misclassifying upper‐level non‐law‐enforcement jobs as law‐enforcement positions and recruiting and filling these coveted, primarily supervisory jobs with only special agents or Industry Operations Investigators.”
Because of this, the whistleblowers alleged, those that were misclassified were eligible for additional benefits, including enhanced retirement benefits and law enforcement availability pay, perks only available to law enforcement.
After conducting the investigation, the Special Counsel substantiated the whistleblowers’ allegations. While the practice cost at least $9.7 million over five years, the Special Counsel noted that the true costs could be as high as $19.7 million, depending on the total number of people that were misclassified.
Is anyone surprised by this?
So, depending on who you ask, somewhere between about $10 million and $20 million of OUR tax dollars was wasted by the ATF over merely misclassifying government workers.
Think about that the next time you're at the gas pump.
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