Another Day in Paradise
What is the upper limit on the "waste, fraud, and abuse?"
This kind of stuff should upset people. The fact that it doesn’t is telling. People aren’t surprised. They’re just disappointed. Really, really disappointed.
‘This week, @Interior is dissolving the Federal Consulting Group (FCG), where one government department charges another to broker consulting contracts. As an example, FCG brokered a $75M contract to design website customer satisfaction surveys, and then attempted to award $830M to conduct similar surveys. The latter contract was discovered by @Interior and DOGE, and cancelled before signature.’
Taxpayers Spent Billions Covering the Same Medicaid Patients Twice
It sounds like there is plenty of “waste, fraud, and abuse” in entitlements spending.
‘Health insurers got double-paid by the Medicaid system for the coverage of hundreds of thousands of patients across the country, costing taxpayers billions of dollars in extra payments.
‘The insurers, which are paid by state and federal governments to cover low-income Medicaid recipients, collected at least $4.3 billion over three years for patients who were enrolled—and paid for—in other states, a Wall Street Journal analysis of Medicaid data found.
‘The patients were signed up for Medicaid in two states at once, in many cases following a move from one to the other. Most were getting all their healthcare services through one insurer in one state, even though Medicaid was paying insurers in both states to cover them.’
If you had just arrived from Mars, you might conclude that this program was designed to enable fraud in the same way that you might conclude that the criminal justice reform movement was an advocacy program for criminals.
Labels have become meaningless and ironic in an Orwellian way, haven’t they?
‘The Small Business Administration failed to implement fraud detection measures until after it had distributed hundreds of billions of dollars in Covid relief and, once the agency did start flagging fraud, most of its fraud referrals lacked the necessary information for further action, according to an explosive government watchdog report.
‘The Government Accountability Office, (GAO) an independent agency that audits the federal government, released a report earlier this week detailing the gaps in the SBA’s fraud detection process for its two major Covid-19 loan initiatives, the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program.’
People of my generation worry that scammers will manipulate their parents into doing terrible things like giving them all their money. These scammers come through the phone and the Internet.
Some criminals have figured out that it’s easier to go to the source and let the Social Security Administration do the work for them.
‘#BREAKING: One of Elon Musk's DOGE geniuses just revealed MASSIVE fraud at Social Security. He says 40% of the phone calls they get are from fraudsters. THAT'S why they're so focused on the telephone services! "At Social Security, one of the first things we learned is that they get phone calls every day of people trying to change direct deposit information. So when you want to change your bank account, you can call Social Security." "We learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are from fraudsters. That's right. Almost half." ELON MUSK: "Yes, and they steal people's social security is what happens. They call in, they claim to be a retiree, and they convince the Social Security person on the phone to change where the money's flowing. It actually goes to some fraudster." "This is happening all day, every day. And then somebody doesn't receive their social security. It's because of all the fraud loopholes in the Social Security system." This is not acceptable! @ElonMusk is trying to change this!’
Congress must shield US companies from European regulations
Foreign regulation is a significant non-tariff barrier to trade.
‘Fortunately, Congress is starting to exercise its constitutional powers over foreign commerce again. On March 12, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) — a former U.S. ambassador to Japan — introduced a bill to shield U.S. companies from the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, a regulation dating back to July 2024 that forces U.S. companies to audit their entire supply chains and disclose wide-ranging environmental, social, and governance or ESG metrics that exceed the requirements of U.S. law.
‘The idea of protecting critical American industries from Europe’s regulatory overreach is not new or partisan. In 2012, President Obama signed a law to block imposition of E.U. carbon fees on U.S. airlines. Then-Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) co-sponsored the bill.’
Trump moves to strip unionization rights from most federal workers
In a private enterprise, unionization at the end of the day is a way for workers to gain pseudo-equity. They grab some of the economic upside that would accrue otherwise to capital by leveraging the threat of shutting down the firm. This works until it doesn’t work; it ends when they have killed the Golden Goose and the firm restructures in bankruptcy. Just ask the airlines from the early 2000s how this works.
In government, unionization elevates the interests of the civil servant over the interests of the people with the threat of disrupted services.
When it comes to national security, this is a problem.
‘President Donald Trump is trying to revoke collective bargaining rights from most federal employees — the latest move in his aggressive campaign to weaken the federal workforce.
‘Trump issued an executive order late Thursday night relying on a rarely used provision of the federal labor laws that authorizes the president to exclude agencies from long-standing unionization rights if he determines that those agencies are primarily engaged in national security work.’
The Teachers Unions Sue Trump for Control
With this kind of money, one might have thought that the teachers’ unions would have spread their bets around the craps table of US politics rather than betting every number and taking odds.
Seven out.
‘As guardians of the status quo, teachers unions want the government to force children into schools the unions control, and the Education Department as currently constituted helps them advance that agenda. The money continues to flow with little or no accounting whether it’s being used responsibly, let alone effectively.
‘Before you buy the argument that Mr. Trump’s efforts to eliminate the Education Department will be detrimental to students, you need to buy the argument that the department’s creation had anything to do with improving student outcomes. That’s a hard sell. As usual, teachers unions are acting in their own interests while pretending to act in the interests of students and families.’
A 21st Century HHS Should Serve People, Not Bureaucracy
Mission creep, duplication, siloed teams. You name it. It probably characterizes our healthcare bureaucracy. No wonder our outcomes are more expensive than those overseas.
‘Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced a sweeping restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — eliminating an estimated 10,000 positions equal to a $1.8 billion annual reduction. For too long, HHS has been bloated, redundant, and misaligned with the real needs of the American people. HHS has ceased to be a responsive, effective steward of public health. Instead, it has grown into a slow-moving leviathan, riddled with redundancy and soaked in taxpayer dollars. A course correction — one that consolidates overlapping agencies with the intent of a more streamlined, mission-focused department, puts mission before empire, and outcomes before bureaucracy — is long overdue.
‘The disparate agencies at HHS often have duplicative functions leading to siloed approaches to addressing the department’s mission, the building of individual fiefdoms, and needless administrative spending that would not be tolerated anywhere except the federal government. A reorganization of the department has long been necessary to eliminate redundancy, deliver on HHS’s mission, and reduce wasteful spending.’