Adam Andrzejewski, who founded and led the government transparency watchdog Open the Books died on Aug. 17, according to news reports Tuesday.
Read MoreTransparency Advocate Adam Andrzejewski, Founder of OpentheBooks, Dead at 55
Tag: Adam Andrzejewski
One Rule Has Saved Americans from Billions in Wasteful Government Spending
A rule requiring the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to publish annual reports on wasteful spending has saved billions of taxpayer dollars since 2011, according to an Open the Books report released Wednesday.
Former Republican Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn amended the Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010 to require the GAO to include an investigation into duplicate spending between government entities in its annual report, which has saved the government $667.5 billion since its first report in 2011, according to Open the Books. Congress, however, had made efforts to stifle the GAO’s mission, threatening to cut its funding right after its first report, and has been the slowest to adopt the GAO’s waste-cutting recommendations.
Read MoreConservative House Freedom Caucus Members Secured over $900 Million in Earmarks: Watchdog
Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus sponsored more than $900 million worth of earmarks over the last two years, according to a study conducted by OpenTheBooks.com and published on Thursday.
While the Freedom Caucus does not publicly list all of its members, OpenTheBooks said they based their study off of a list of 49 lawmakers that Pew compiled, which includes lawmakers who publicly identified as members of the caucus or are “closely aligned” with it.
Read MoreNew Documentary Exposes Ivy League Privilege and the Students it Shuts Out
“Exclusion U,” a feature documentary released this year, details how Ivy League universities accumulate billions of dollars as they restrict class sizes, turn away qualified students, and favor the children of the rich.
“Ivy League endowments are worth $193 billion dollars, but they only educate 0.3 percent of U.S. undergrads,” the film’s narrator stated. “That’s less than 63,000 students.”
Read MoreNIH, Agency Scientists Received Estimated $350 Million in Royalty Payments over Last Decade: Report
The National Institutes of Health and its scientists received an estimated $350 million in royalties from third-party payers between 2010 and 2020, according to an investigation by government transparency watchdog Open the Books.
The third-party payers are, according to the report, mostly pharmaceutical companies that credit NIH scientists as coinventors on various patents.
Read MoreReports: Twenty Federal Agencies Have Wasted $2.3 Trillion in Taxpayer Money Since 2004
Improper payments made by federal government agencies totaled $175 billion last year, or $15 billion per month, according to PaymentAccuracy.gov, a website of the U.S. government.
This is in addition to $2.25 trillion worth of taxpayer money spent on improper payments from 2004 to 2018, according to a Congressional Research Service brief on the Improper Payments Act.
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