Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) challenged U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s assumption the “only option” was to cut benefits or raise revenues. Coburn said the U.S. should save $200 billion a year by eliminating duplication of federal programs and reducing Medicare fraud, instead of increasing taxes.

“It’s not right to assume that we couldn’t run the federal government more efficiently and that the only option is to raise revenue,” he told Geithner in a Senate hearing this week.

“I want to challenge you on that for a minute,” Coburn said. Coburn said his analysis of a GAO report shows that “we could save $110 billion a year by eliminating duplication in the federal government.”

And, yet, “There’s no proposals in this budget to actually do that,” Coburn told Geithner.

“There’s also $100 billion in fraud in Medicare and Medicaid,” Coburn said, citing a second GAO report.

“That’s $200 billion a year. So, it’s not right to assume that we could not run the fed government more efficiently and that the only option is to raise revenue.”

While we’re on the subject, we save taxpayers some money by eliminating government spending projects like these:

• $3.6 million to study drug-smoking, menstruating monkeys
• $918 million to learn that bar fights are more likely in dark, dirty pubs where disagreeable people drink a lot
• $12,500 to produce an English translation of a novel by the Marquis de Sade

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