On a periodic basis we review the wasteful government spending via a continuing theme of “By The Numbers.” We review how poorly taxpayer wealth is being spent and wasted on stupid programs and projects and also how many government programs are being ripped off of billions and billions of dollars by fraud and criminal enterprises. Today is just another sad chapter on how politicians and government bureaucrats are pretty inept when it comes to safeguarding taxpayer dollars.
1)And government waste and criminal fraud of taxpayer wealth is not limited to Washington D.C.:
A recent research report from the Empire Center For Public Policy revealed that around 3 million New York residents are enrolled in Medicaid and a related state run program, Essential Plan, that should not be receiving benefits.
The two programs cost the state government and its taxpayers a whopping $113 million a year and yet about one third of those receiving these financial benefits are likely not eligible to receive them.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 5.5 million New Yorkers are eligible to receive these benefits because their low incomes qualify them for benefits.
However, the program had 8.5 million people making use of the two programs’ benefits.
Furthermore, about 44% of New York residents rely on either program for their health care needs with an astounding 60% in New York City enrolled in either program.
No other state has enrollment rates higher than 37%, making New York either a very poor state or a very corrupt program manager for health care needs for low income people.
28% of the state government’s entire budget is spent on health insurance for its supposedly poor citizens.
Another good intention program undermined by gross incompetence of government bureaucracy and state politicians. And as always, the taxpayers pay for their incompetence.
2)Senator Ron Paul recently released his annual compilation of Federal government waste, his so-called “Festivus” report. In his estimation, the Federal government spent an obscene $1,000,000,000,000 on wasteful, useless, and criminally infested programs in the recent years. That equates to every American man, woman, and child theoretically paying over $2,900 each for this wasteful spending.
And some of those projects that sucked up taxpayer wealth are quite disgusting and useless:
$12 million for a Las Vegas pickleball complex.
$4,840,082 for Ukrainian influencers.
$720,479 for wetland projects for ducks…. in Mexico.
$10,000 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) cabaret show on ice skates for climate change …. performed by drag queens.
Another NEA project that used $365,000 to promote circuses in city parks.
$500,000 was spent on an Ethiopian social media campaign.
$253,653 was spent to combat misinformation in Bosnia.
$2.1 million was spent for border security in Paraguay.
$3 million spent for the “Girl Centered Climate Action” program in Brazil.
$410,470 was spent by the Department of Health and Human Services to study whether lonely rats are more likely to seek cocaine than happy rats.
$10 BILLION was spent over the years to maintain, furnish, and lease mostly empty office space for Federal workers that mostly work from home these days.
Over $15 billion was spent to try and convince Americans to only drive electric cars.
$32,000 was spent to advocate for break dancing as an Olympic sport.
$288,563 was spent by the National Science Foundation to create safe spaces for bird watching groups.
These are obviously a tiny, tiny part of the wasteful spending that the Federal government has wasted in the past fiscal year but it give you an idea of how trivially the government treats our tax dollars. Millions of Americans are homeless, hungry, and in need of drug addiction treatment and Washington politicians ignore these problems and spend taxpayer wealth on safe spaces for bird watching groups. Disgusting priorities.
3) All of these wasteful expenditures contribute mightily to a Federal government national debt that is around $36,000,000,000,000. And this $36 TRILLION debt is rising rapidly every second of every day given that Washington politicians have no sense of fiscal restraint.
This debt now creates an annual interest payment on the debt of $882 billion a year. And this is quickly spiraling out of control since just two years ago in 2022, the Federal government’s annual interest payment on the debt was $476 billion. Thus, in just 24 months or so, the Biden administration's disastrous spending programs have raised the annual debt interest load by a whopping 85%.
Given that there are about 167 million Federal taxpayers every year, that means that on average every tax paying American is paying about $5,300 a year just to service the interest debt load that Washington has rung up. Think about what you could do with an additional $5,300 in your pocket every year if the political class actually ran a balanced budget.
One final checkpoint on how these numbers are ridiculously dangerous. For folks who would just pooh-pooh thee numbers with the standard idiocy of “Just tax the rich more,” consider these numbers:
Elon Musk is now the richest person in the country with an estimated personal wealth value of $400 billion.
If you were to tax his wealth by 10% a year, not his income, his total wealth, and use the $40 billion to pay down the national debt you would reduce it by .1%, not 1%, not 10% but .1%.
However, that savings would easily and quickly be wiped out since the national debt would still be rising.
In other words, even taxing the rich on their wealth would not come close to overcoming the out of control spending of the Federal government and the resultant increase in the interest payment on that debt.
4)We have previously discussed the reality that enormous amounts of taxpayer wealth that was intended to help out struggling Americans during the covid crisis was misspent and lost to criminal fraud. One of those many wasteful programs was called the Shuttered Venue Operations Grant (SVOG):
The purpose of the program was to spend $16 billion to help struggling artists, their employees, and entertainment venues stay afloat during the covid lockdowns.
The key word in the objective of this program was “struggling” artists.
But instead, millions of dollars were spent on famous and wealthy artists who were nowhere close to struggling.
Rapper Lil Wayne got a disgusting $8.9 million from the fund.
Rather than spend that money on his crew members he spent millions of the taxpayer dollars on designer clothes for himself, paid off old debts, and hosted a marijuana festival promoting his own cannabis brand.
Famous singer Chris Brown collected the maximum amount allowed in the program for his company, CBS Touring, but then went and paid himself $5 million and then spent $80,000 to give himself a birthday party.
Some guy named Marshmello, a so-called masked DJ, collected $9.9 million and rather than even try to spread the money to his workers and staff he allegedly put the entire sum directly into his own pocket.
Steve Aoki collected money for his company, DJ Kid Millionaire Touring, and then allegedly spent $2.4 million on his payroll but allegedly then put $1.9 million directly into his own pocket.
The rock band, Shinedown, allegedly took $8.3 million from the program and rather than spread it around to their workers they allegedly simply divided it among themselves.
Hip-hop duo Rae Sremmurd allegedly took $7.7 million.
These funds were supposed to help workers in the industry that were not allowed to work as a result of the covid lockdowns. But obviously the program was implemented with lousy protocols and controls. Millionaires simply got wealthier while small business owners, lower and middle class workers struggled, and ordinary Americans suffered through the agony of the covid pandemic, taking massive financial losses in the process.
That will do it for the political insanity for today: fraud in DC, fraud in New York, wasteful spending for stupid projects, and the ticking time bomb that is the $36,000,000,000,000 Federal government national debt.
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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:
https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom
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mRNA
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