Despite knowing that they are tax cheats, the federal government continues to pay hundreds of thousands of people and companies.

The latest example of this nonsensical practice is found in a report showing that thousands of Medicaid health care service providers are still being paid despite owing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal income taxes.

In one case, a medical transport company that owes millions of dollars in payroll taxes for its employees was still paid more than $1 million by Medicaid.

The study by the Government Accountability Office looked at three states, albeit large states — Texas, New York and Florida. In 2009, the study found that 7,000 Medicaid providers in those states were paid $6.6 billion by Medicaid despite also owing nearly $800 million in upaid federal income taxes.

The study found that about 6 percent of Medicaid providers owed taxes. Applying this rate of tax cheating across 50 states suggests tens of billions of dollars in back taxes are owed by companies that continue to be paid with tax dollars.

This is a prime example of bureacracy in which the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. It appears that Medi-caid is either too big to manage or government bureaucrats don’t care much about how taxpayers’ money is spent.

A technical reason this absurd situation exists is that the IRS is a federal agency and Medicaid spending is controlled by the states, despite most of the funding coming from the federal government. This loophole could be closed by Congress.

But Medicaid isn’t the only example of the federal government making payments despite being owed taxes. Federal employees are estimated to owe about $1 billion in back taxes. To address this problem, the House of Representatives passed a bill last week that would rule that anyone “seriously delinquent” on taxes is ineligible for federal employment. It sounds simple — if you have unpaid taxes to the U.S. Treasury, you could lose your job with the federal government.

It’s estimated, when including current federal employees and retirees, that about 280,000 people receiving federal money owed $3.4 billion in back taxes in 2010. Deadbeats and tax cheats might not be found at a higher incidence in the federal workforce, but working for the government should require that they pay the taxes they owe — or lose their job.

It’s unclear whether the House bill will become law.

Defense contractors represent a third group notorious for not paying taxes they owe while still being paid by the government.

Non-defense contractors also are often paid through federal contracts despite owing back taxes. In March, Sens. Tom Carper, D-Del., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., sent a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta saying that the Pentagon should garnish payments to any defense contractors owing back taxes to the federal government. The senators cited an example of a small company recently awarded a $20 million contract for marketing and media services by the Army despite the company owing more than $4 million unpaid taxes since 2006.

Once again, another common-sense suggestion. But since it’s Congress and Washington, D.C., and they are spending other people’s money, it’s unclear how long this unacceptable situation will continue.