We have so often discussed the reality that the country and the Federal government that operates it is quickly heading towards a fiscal cliff that, unless something drastic is done, will crash our economy, our savings, and our freedoms. The Federal government debt is quickly ascending to a whopping $37,000,000,000,000 ($37 TRILLION for those that do not want to count the zeroes). In fact, the case could probably be made that we as a nation have already gone over that fiscal cliff but have just not hit the valley floor below and gone splat.
Despite the raging epidemic of Trump Derangement Syndrome among liberals and Democrats, Trump, Elon Musk, and the members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have done a great job in a very short time identifying stupid, nonsensical, corrupt, and unneeded Federal government costs and expenses.
No matter what you think of Trump as a person (and by the way, I have never voted for the man), his attacking of excess costs had to be done if we have any chance of getting outlandish and wasteful government spending under control. Otherwise, the dire results listed above and the hyperinflation that would come with it would not be at all pleasant.
Our first discussion on the outlandish costs he identified were listed in a series of posts earlier this year beginning with the following:
https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/02/february-2025-by-numbers-part-2.html
Over the next series of posts we will continue that discussion and identify the corruption, waste, and stupidity that the Federal government is guilty of when it comes to wasting taxpayer wealth.
1)The African Development Foundation is a government agency that is supposed to help the economic development in Africa. Never mind that there are tens of millions of Americans today that are homeless, hungry, in need of drug addiction help, that cannot afford health insurance, and are having trouble finding good jobs, let’s spend taxpayer wealth to help African development. But as with most government operations, the corruption and waste is very prevalent:
Mathieu Zahul, is the agency’s CFO.
When DOGE auditors turned up on his doorstep to see how efficiently taxpayer money was being spent, he refused to even let them enter the offices of the agency.
It took U.S. Marshals to get them access.
Could it be his refusal was because it was eventually found out that tha Zahul was allegedly steering no bid contracts worth almost $1,000,000 to a friend in Kenya who, in turn, then wired money transfers back to Zahul.
Zahul had previously declared personal bankruptcy but still the Federal government said he could be trusted to correctly handle millions of taxpayer dollars.
Of the nearly one million dollars steered towards his friend in Kenya, who was an old friend from previous government positions in the Veterans Administration, $350,000 of the one million dollars was classified as “travel” expenses which were incurred during the COVID lockdown period when no one was supposed to be traveling around.
Additionally, it was uncovered that Zahul had allegedly dropped $2 million in a Ghana bank without proper authorizations, all courtesy of the American taxpayer.
The sad part about this caper besides the wasting and corrupting of millions of taxpayer dollars is that whistleblowers were screaming about this corruption back in 2021 but no one did anything about it.
2)Elon Musk has been unstoppable so far in uncovering the wasting of taxpayer dollars. In a recent interview on Fox \News, he discussed just four of the major spending disasters he and his team have uncovered:
The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) gave a $132,000 contract to Mohammad Qaesem Halimi, a former member of the Taliban besides spending money on private jets and weapons which were stored at the USIP headquarters.
DOGE and Musk found that $200 billion in COVID funds were spent on suspicious expenditures including hotel rooms in Las Vegas (Granite School District in Utah), the renting of a Major League Baseball stadium (Santa Ana Unified School District in California), an ice cream truck (also in California), and other non-COVID expenses.
DOGE reported that the Government Accountability office uncovered $162 billion in improper payments made by Federal government agencies in the last previous year which comes on top of the $236 billion in improper payments the year before.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs had wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on useless DEI contracts across many Federal government organizations.
Hundreds of billions of dollars misspent on unnecessary and often criminal enterprises that had nothing to do with making Americans’ lives better or safer.
3)DOGE also uncovered serious problems and corruption with the disbursement of taxpayer money for unemployment insurance claims:
24,500 people over the age of 115 years old claimed $59 million in job insurance benefits.
28,000 kids between the ages of 1 and 5 claimed $254 million in unemployment benefits.
9,700 people with birthdays over 15 years in the future, collected a whopping $69 million in unemployment benefits.
A gentleman who claimed to have been born in 2154 claimed $41,000 in unemployment benefits.
Thus, in total, just these four types of examples cost the American taxpayer almost $400 million.
And who knows what other schemes are still going on that have not yet been uncovered. For perspective, consider that there are currently about 770,000 homeless Americans living on the streets or in shelters. That $400 million could have provided over 500 meals to each of those 770,000 homeless Americans, a far better use of taxpayer wealth than the corruption that wasted it on the situations listed above.
4)The question of waste also should focus blame not only on the Federal agencies and bureaucrats that wasted taxpayer wealth but also on current and past members of Congress that allowed the waste to go on for decades. It was only when Trump and Musk started crawling around in the bureaucracy that the waste was laid bare and made known.
Consider a recent GAO report’s findings: “The GAO’s new report found there were $236 billion in improper payments in Fiscal Year 2023. Nearly 80 percent of Fiscal Year 2023 improper payments are concentrated in five areas: the Department of Health and Human Services’ Medicare and Medicaid programs; the Department of Labor’s federal pandemic unemployment assistance; the Department of Treasury’s Earned Income Tax Credit; and the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program loan forgiveness. Since 2003, cumulative improper payments have totaled $2.7 trillion.”
Let’s repeat these GAO findings: for the past 21 years, $2,700,000,000,000 in improper payments were made and Congress did nothing to fix the leaking of this incompetence and criminality. This $2.7 trillion would have theoretically made the current national deficit over 7% smaller, a good first step in getting the government's deficit spending under control.
So don't blame Trump and Musk for uncovering such wasteful spending, it was sitting there the whole time, for at least two decades according to the GAO. And Federal government bureaucrats did nothing to stop the waste, often enriching themselves with the wasteful spending, and Congress did nothing to stop it either.
That will do it for today: wasteful spending and corruption of taxpayer wealth from tiny government agencies to the halls of Congress totaling trillions of dollars. And unfortunately we are just getting started on the path to document waste.
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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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