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
How about fixing the shitty living conditions of enlisted military personnel?
That would cost 21B, and we just don’t have it. Did you not see the reduction between FY 23 and 24? 🤨
A bunch of O5s and good NCOs could fix it. Just have to get the starry eyed folks out of the way.
Convert the golf courses to land nav and MILES ranges. That costs almost nothing. The first users do the work as the FTX. Ditto maintenance. Start competitive leagues for small but shiny trophys.
Any EM unable to be served properly in a DFAC gets to eat free for a week in any officer/NCO club. Officers pay the expense in shares, one share per O level.
Whats an Officer’s Club?
If real savings are realized pay off debt.
A lot of construction work could be completed at a lower cost. Stop requiring paying of prevailing wage rates for all projects. Let bids out to the lowest bidder. As long as no one is paid less than minimum wage. You have met wage requirements. And if you don’t like low wages, don’t take the job. Working for the government should not be a wealth builder, it should be a place to gain experience and a stepping stone to better wages in the private sector. So government unions need to go. Private sector unions is okay. The reason for union elimination is there is no one representing the voters/taxpayers when dealing with government unions, when the union is run by the government workers. The union just gives themselves raises as they see fit. Gotta stop this abuse.
What a muddled mess.
So the bottom bracket taxpayer is “wealthy”?
So folks of any size over-taxed to pay for garbage dont deserve some token of it back?
The hostage puppies might suffer?
Dude, it ain’t your money. If it isn’t explicitly in the Constitution, the Feds shouldn’t be doing it. Those tasks are state jobs.
We got into this mess by yet another “would it not be great if the Feds got involved?” Generally, no, they made it worse, like the department of education total fail. FEMA is a patronage/fraud cesspool. Nuke it and cut checks to whomever can show work. Samaritan’s Purse has tremendous throughput with very little going to overhead.
The next few years are going ti be very painful for a bunch of crooks, and for folks who foolishly believed the lies of the crooked.
There is plenty of money to cut fraud, refund a bit, and fix what is needed, and pay down debt. Plus cut the overall tax rates so we grow instead of stagnate.
But first, waste fraud abuse has to become -painful- and career ending. And I don’t care at this point if I am impoverished by the cleanup, since leaving a better USA to posterity us well worth it. I know how to live poor. Been poor more than I’ve been OK. Better poor in a secure USA than comfy in some 3rd world sithole imitation.
Even you will come around to seeing it.
I’m wid you, 11B-. As much as it’d be nice to have a spare 5 large deposited in my account, I’d rather see it go to paying down the debt…for my Grand Children’s sake AND the good of the Country. If they did give it to me, I’d probably spend some of it on a classic firearm…the rest I’d just blow. Yep, been poorer than a Church Mouse more times than I want to remember, yet I survived. Doing quite well, now…Thank you very much, due to me stashing quantities of $s above the 401K match, some decent real estate investments, and my SS (which I’ve paid into since 1965). Odd that illegals (and SSI deadbeats) were getting more a month from the Sugar Teat than I am after paying in all of those years. This is why we can’t have nice things…and “owe” north of 36 TRILLION $s.
Once the despots figured out how to raid The Treasury (read We, The People) the monster became self feeding. I not only want all of the pure waste reined in, I want the grift to stop and the ill gotten gains returned to The Treasury. That would include a deep dive, forensic audit of how Kongress Klown Kritter’s net worth increased so much on the salary that We, The People, paid them. The corruption we are seeing now makes the ones we’ve seen in the past pale. The Grant administration, The RR Robber Barons, The Teapot Dome, and so on. These people are nothing but common outlaws. They don’t even deserve to be decently fed and then decently shot. They DO deserve to be “…hanged by the neck until dead…”
That money needs to go to pay down the unsecured debt. I personally have $0 in unsecured or under secured debt and love it. The government borrowed over $100k in my name for stuff I never wanted nor even saw any of. If they are getting rid of that same stuff, then they can use the money saved to pay that debt down.
Not surprised:
And Z-man agrees to sign deal exchanging Ukraine’s mineral rights for U.S. military support now (says Gateway Pundit):
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/zelensky-folds-like-cheap-suit-will-sign-ukraines/
Another one gets TRUMPED!!!
If such a “dividend” were to be distributed it should only be shared among those actually paid income taxes.
However, a better use would be to pay off outstanding debt and reduce the debt capacity of the federal government by the amount DOGE recovers.
And speaking of reform, the EPA and the climate ninnies, turn on that stinking “eternal flame”. Sorry bastards want to take away gas stoves and do away with beef cattle? Force California to provide enough electricity for their own population.
I wonder if burning tires would make enough heat to run a steam generator.
should read “turning OFF” that stinking “eternal flame”
This one deserves its own thread.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-sent-2-billion-stacey-abrams-linked-group-green-energy-scheme-epa-says
In Joe Biden’s America, everyone was a billionaire.
As long as the Big Guy gets his 10%.
Better do something with that cash before Phil Monkress (CEO of All-Points Logistics) tries to steal it!
“NOT fund tax reductions for the wealthy“
Do you have an example? I haven’t seen any tax reductions for the wealthy. If anything, due to our progressive tax system, the wealthy pays a disproportionate share of our taxes, which in turn translates into a higher cost of living for the rest of us, since the rich really really don’t pay taxes, they just pass down the increases by raising the price of the products and services they produce.
The top wealthy pays roughly 30 % of the taxes. I hear some A-Holes wanting to double it to 60 %
The Progressive Democrats want to punish success and ambition. They complain that Elon Musk has too much money, so it must be seized. No explanation on why it needs to be seized other than they think he has too much. But you never hear them say that rap “artists” or professional athletes make too much money, even the ones that underperform. Why is that?