Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Understanding the extent and nature of identity theft-related refund fraud is important to crafting a response to it, but Internal Revenue Service (IRS) managers recognize that they do not have a complete picture. Program officials said that one of the challenges they face in combating this type of fraud is its changing nature and how it is concealed. While perfect knowledge about cases and who is committing the crime will never be attained, the better IRS understands the problem, the better it can respond and the better Congress can oversee IRS's efforts. IRS officials described several areas where the extent and nature of identity theft is unknown."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reported in February 2012 that replacing $1 notes with $1 coins could potentially provide $4.4 billion in net benefits to the federal government over 30 years. The overall net benefit was due solely to increased seigniorage and not to reduced production costs. Seigniorage is the difference between the cost of producing coins or notes and their face value; it reduces government borrowing and interest costs, resulting in a financial benefit to the government. GAO’s estimate takes into account processing and production changes that occurred in 2011, including the Federal Reserve’s use of new equipment to determine the quality and authenticity of notes, which has increased the expected life of the note thereby reducing the costs of circulating a note over 30 years. (The $1 note is expected to last 4.7 years and the $1 coin 30 years.) Like all estimates, there are uncertainties surrounding GAO’s estimate, especially since the costs of the replacement occur in the first several years and can be estimated with more certainty than the benefits, which are less certain because they occur further in the future. Moreover, changes to the inputs and assumptions …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Each year, Congress appropriates billions of dollars to pay and support U.S. military personnel at home and overseas. In fiscal year 2003, military personnel (MILPERS) appropriations amounted to more than $109 billion. Once the funds are appropriated, the military services are responsible for ensuring that the funds are properly obligated and disbursed. Their end-of-the-fiscal-year review is critical to the next year's budget formulation process because the services use the obligations for the most recent fiscal year completed as a point of reference in developing their new budgets, and Congress uses this information as a point of comparison in its review of the new budget requests. In our prior work for the House and Senate appropriation and authorization committees, reviewing the services' budget justifications, we found that although the services were conducting annual reviews and certifications, the services did not review transactions by matching obligations to individual disbursements in all of the years that disbursements can occur, as required by the Department of Defense (DOD) Financial Management Regulation. We also found that the services disbursed some obligations for purposes other than those reported in their budget submission, but their …

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Forest Service canceled or suspended several timber sales contracts to protect endangered or threatened species. From October 1992 through June 1996, the Forest Service paid $6.5 million to settle claims on 48 canceled or suspended contracts. Currently, there are pending claims of about $51 million for canceled or suspended contracts. To minimize its financial liability in the future, the Forest Service is developing cancellation regulations and a new standard timber sales contract. Progress in finalizing these new regulations has been slow because of the Forest Service's need to conduct a more detailed economic analysis. The proposed rules have also undergone several changes since the Forest Service began working on them in the late 1980s to settle some of the timber companies' claims. The Forest Service has sometimes used replacement timber; however, the timber replacement program has had limited success because the timber was either unavailable within the sale area or was in such poor condition that many companies would not accept it."

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO's previous work has shown that, once enacted, tax expenditures and their relative contributions toward achieving federal missions and goals are often less visible than spending programs, which are subject to more systematic review. One reason for this is that they often operate, in practice, like entitlement programs not subject to annual appropriations. Since 1994, GAO has recommended greater scrutiny of tax expenditures, as periodic reviews could help determine how well specific tax expenditures work to achieve their goals and how their benefits and costs compare to those of programs with similar goals. However, the Executive Branch has made little progress in developing a framework for systematically evaluating tax expenditures."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In summary, TSA receives thousands of air passenger screening complaints through five central mechanisms, but does not have an agencywide policy, consistent processes, or a focal point to guide receipt and use of such information. Also, while the agency has several methods to inform passengers about its complaint processes, it does not have an agencywide policy or mechanism to ensure consistent use of these methods among commercial airports. In addition, TSA's complaint resolution processes do not fully conform to standards of independence to ensure that these processes are fair, impartial, and credible, but the agency is taking steps to improve independence. To address these issues, we made four recommendations to TSA with which the agency concurred, and it indicated actions it is taking in response. Finally, TSA officials stated that the agency is undertaking efforts to focus its resources and improve the passenger experience at security checkpoints by applying new intelligence-driven, risk-based screening procedures, including expanding its Pre✓™ program. TSA plans to have this program in place at 35 airports by the end of the calendar year and estimates that it has screened more than 4 million passengers …