Money for … well, seemingly everyone.

Yeah, a good way to fire up the weekend. I get the general sense that Health and Human Services may not be one of our favorite government agencies – it may have once had a narrowly focused mission with clear-cut goals of helping Americans, but like the AFL-CIO, Teamsters, and many other things, it has strayed so far from its original task that I’d bet no one can truly define what they do. They start off today:

The watchdog group Open the Books looked at grants to nonprofits awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. Its responsibilities include caring for unaccompanied migrant children who crossed the southern border illegally and refugees entering legally.

The watchdog found that in FY 2021, it distributed $2.4 billion in grants to nonprofits. In FY 2022, it distributed $3.4 billion, then that number skyrocketed up to $10 billion in FY 2023 before being reduced to $4.2 billion in FY 2024.  Fox News

Anyone here from North Carolina, say Asheville or Boone? I realize to most, $20,000,000,000 is a rounding error – but I’ll bet to those who have been stormed out, flooded out, disastered out – that cash could be a godsend, or even a lifeline.

Twenty billion.

And in other news,  some folks at FEMA have lost their jobs. When you hear that they unilaterally tried to give $59,000,0000 to illegal immigrants, think you can see why.

The Department of Homeland Security says it has taken back $59 million in FEMA funds earmarked for hotels housing migrants in New York City, a day after it fired those involved in making the payment.

“Secretary Noem has clawed back the full payment that FEMA deep state activists unilaterally gave to NYC migrant hotels,” a DHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

DHS announced Tuesday that it had fired four employees “for circumventing leadership” and making the payments unilaterally. The firings included FEMA’s CFO, two analysts and a grant specialist.

The use of FEMA to make payments related to immigration has been a topic of controversy in recent months. The funding comes via the Shelter and Services Program (SSP). It is congressionally appropriated and requires FEMA to use funding shifted over from Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The Biden administration pushed back last year over claims that disaster funding was being diverted, noting that the funding is appropriated to CBP and administered by FEMA.  Fox News II

So, exactly as Biden swore they were NOT doing, they shifted Customs and Border Patrol funding to paying immigrant hotel bills. I suspect that “unauthorized use of government funds” phrase I have hear before could be attached to some legal issues? Don’t want to screw around in New York, guys, names like Dannemora and Sing Sing still resound and I sure wouldn’t want to spend winter behind concrete walls in New York. Just gotta be chilly.

And then we have Elon Musk, Department of Government Efficiency, floating the concept of using some of these theoretical savings to give taxpayers $5,000 each.

Billionaire DOGE head Elon Musk said on X, formerly known as Twitter, he would ask President Donald Trump about a proposal for a “DOGE Dividend” that would give taxpayers a refund check of $5,000 funded by the savings from his Department of Government Efficiency.

James Fishback, CEO of investment firm Azoria and reportedly an outside adviser to DOGE, pitched the idea of “a tax refund check to be sent after the expiration of DOGE in July 2026 funded exclusively with a portion of the total savings delivered by DOGE” on social media on Friday, and continued posting about it Tuesday, tagging Musk in a tweet about the proposal.  Forbes

Supposedly 20% of all those trillions Elon’s gonna save us would go to sending checks to 79 million taxpaying families.  Uh, no. How about maybe we use that money (if it ever materializes) to NOT fund tax reductions for the wealthy, direct the military to treat its enlisted properly, pay down the foreign debt a little – you know, use taxpayer money to benefit taxpayers and the country? Just a passing thought.

Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", Government Incompetence