An interesting story came out of New Mexico CBS affiliate KRQE earlier this week – phone reports of fraud, waste and abuse to the state’s auditor’s office were up 110% in recent years.
The fact that the reports had doubled was not the interesting part — the reason why they doubled was.
According to the State Auditor, Brian Colón, the increase is not due to more fraud being committed. Rather, is because more New Mexico residents are speaking out.
And why are they speaking out more now?
Mr. Colón say its because of the efforts of his office “going from community to community, encouraging people to report” as well as the fact they were reading about all the reports of government fraud.
In other words, they were tired of being ripped off.
The important point of the article though, is a simple fact: if Americans are made aware of an injustice, they will act.
As Mr. Colón said, “Enough’s enough. We will no longer accept second best in government. We deserve a top rate, first class government in New Mexico, and we can only have that if the days of waste, fraud, and abuse, and frankly, offensive corruption, is no longer tolerated.”
Some of America’s greatest achievements began with citizen’s just being fed up with what was happening to them or being done to them. In fact, that is exactly what this country was founded on.
There is not one American who wants to see one dollar of taxpayer money go into the pockets of corrupt government contractors. As Accenture states:“Governments are paying a hefty price in the face of fraud, but citizens are also feeling the effects. The denial of essential services and reduction in available funding to citizens is a direct result of fraud.”
What happened in New Mexico should be happening in every state in the country as well as in Washington DC. American taxpayers need to speak up and take action because without this action the powerful entities who overbill the government will not stop. Even $7 billion in fines for the top 10 government contractors has not stopped overbilling fraud.
Let’s take the lead from Mr. Colón:
No longer are we going to say, ‘That’s the way it’s done in New Mexico.’ We’re going to say, ‘We’re going to hold people accountable.’”
