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 post:
https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/02/february-2025-by-numbers-part-2.html
The first in this latest series of wasteful Spending posts can be found at:
https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/05/trump-and-musk-continue-to-uncover.html
Over this 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)Let’s start today’s government waste discussion with the credit card abuses courtesy of the Federal government and its credit cards mismanagement:
DOGE recently announced that 200,000 Federal government-issued credit cards have been deactivated that never should have been issued in the first place.
This brings the total number of deactivated Federal employee credit cards to a whopping 500,000 in less than 10 weeks.
DOGE and Musk found that the Federal government had issued more credit cards than there were Federal government employees.
Some of these credit cards had $10,000 a month in credit limits.
Musk estimated that the deactivated cards were “80% waste, 20% fraud.”
You cannot issue hundreds of thousands unneeded credit cards and not find waste, corruption, and criminal behavior that never should have happened if Congress and the bureaucrats were actually doing their job.
Again, this has probably been going on for many years and yet Congress has done nothing to fix the incompetence.
2)But it is not just a failed credit card tracking and issuance process that has wasted untold billions of taxpayer dollars. Consider what DOGE found out when the dove into the Small Business Administration (SBA) records:
Apparently, the SBA okayed about $330 million in loans over the past few years to loan recipients that were under the age of 11 years old.
One case was uncovered where a 9 MONTH old got a $100,000 SBA loan.
According to Trump’s SBA Administrator, Kelly Loeffler: “We’re tackling the fraud, waste, and abuse at the agency,” noting that “hundreds of billions” in fraudulent claims have been left untouched for years.
Trump called the finding just pure fraud, not waste or abuse, fraud.
There was no information available on what the 9 month old loan recipient planned to do with the $100,000.
3)We have often discussed the massive failure in California as it applies to the high speed train line that was supposed to run up and down the California coast and whisk people quickly from LA to San Francisco. What started out as a bold transportation plan has now devolved into, excuse the pun, a train wreck:
California voters first approved a high speed railroad proposal back in 2008.
The rail line would run from Los Angeles to San Francisco and would be operational by 2020, five years ago.
Not only did the schedule slip but the estimated cost of the line skyrocketed over time also.
The plan evolved so that the first link in the line would run from Merced to Bakersfield, a 171 mile run out of the 474 mile final plan.
That sub-segment is estimated to be finished between 2030 and 2033, 10 to 13 years later than when they claimed the whole line would be done back in 2008.
It is now estimated that the entire project will end up costing $128 billion, about $100 million more than the original estimate.
Thus, the estimated cost is now about four times higher than originally estimated.
But this is what American politicians do: they propose these grand projects with a reasonable starting budget and timeframe and almost always overrun the budget by many fold, provide a shoddy end product, and never attain the benefits they claimed would happen. The California high speed train project is a classic example: four times the budget, many years delay, shorter train line than promised.
And it seems that Texas politicians also had a high speed train fantasy, a fantasy that would link Dallas to Houston with a high speed rail line:
The original sales pitch for this train line is that it would be financed with private, non-taxpayer funds.
But apparently that did not quite work out and Biden allocated almost $64 million of Federal government taxpayer money to fund the train line.
Which is a classic politician screwup - private companies and citizens did not think it was a good idea or good investment and stayed away with their money so the government ignored that warning signal and gladly offered our money for the project.
Fortunately, Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, realized this would be a foolish waste of Federal taxpayer money and put an end to a $64 million Federal taxpayer subsidy.
Given that Amtrak is still not profitable on the east coast and the California high speed rail line was failing on the west coast, killing off Federal funding of this Texas train idea was likely the right choice.
A small $64 million victory for the American taxpayer.
4)Trump and DOGE are not only uncovering wasteful spending on stupid, inane projects and government operating incompetence and inefficiencies, but they also are reminding us that sometimes it is government employees themselves that are ripping off the American taxpayer:
Yusuf Akoll, was a Senior Procurement Contractor Specialist in the Federal government’s much and deservedly maligned, USAID operation.
He allegedly created a fake company to fraudulently steal business relief COVID relief funds to the tune of almost $17,000.
But this is just one case of how pervasive the fraud was in the administration of COVID relief funds.
For example, Amir Aqeel was recently sentenced to 15 years in prison because he operated a $20 million COVID relief fund fraud operation.
He submitted 75 false loan applications with false employee numbers and payroll expenses in order to get granted dozens of loans.
He used the criminally obtained funds to buy houses, a Porsche, and a Lamborghini.
He and his five co-conspirators cashed more than 1,100 fake paychecks within their fraud scheme.
Obviously these criminals were ot the only ones ripping off the ill prepared COVID relief processes with at least one estimate estimating up to a trillion in taxpayer wealth was ripped off during the COVID period.
And that a lot of the fraud within that trillion dollars was from overseas, not just U.S. based criminals.
Given that years have passed since the COVID fraud started, at least Trump and Musk are identifying and trying to prevent future fraud and wasteful spending and possibly claw back some of the wasteful spending and fraud that has already happened. How any American taxpayer can think that their actions are wrong and stupid is beyond comprehension.
Whether it is a trillion dollars in misspent COVID funds or $17,000 ripped off by a Federal government employee, every taxpayer dollar should be spent wisely and protected from misuse, waste, fraud, and stupidity, a reality that never occurred to Federal bureaucrats and Washington politicians.
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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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