I've grown accustomed to the ridiculous double standards that characterize what passes for political discourse.
Outraged by Trump's buyout offers to all federal employees? The practice was started by President Clinton who successfully reduced the government workforce by over 100,000 utilizing buyouts.
Appalled by the deportation of illegal immigrants? The descriptive title Deporter in Chief was given by Latino advocacy groups to President Obama.
Yet these exercises in selective memory are far less puzzling than the current outrage over Elon and his DOGE employees. I can't wrap my mind around the fact that Democrats are having apoplexy over 20 something year old code savants using AI to uncover improper or unjustifiable expenditures, rather than the acknowledged fact that in the past 20 years our government has payed out 2.7 TRILLION dollars in improper payments!!! Oh, and that phrase, improper payments, comes from the GAO, not me.
2.7 trillion. There were 236 billion in "improper payments," in fiscal 2023 alone!
Where is the national outrage over this? This should be a huge scandal. But it is not. Why? These payments are obviously fraudulent if not outright money laundering. Or do some think we were actually going to send 50 million condoms to Palestine, a nation of approximately 2-3 million. These are our tax dollars being systematically stolen.
But no one cares.
Make it make sense.
I would like to see a breakdown of what the 'improper payments' were.
Are they scheduled payments that were made off schedule?
Are they payments made before some i's were dotted or t's were crossed, that were going to be made eventually anyway?
Are they payments that should never have been made and would not have been made if there had been oversight?
Are they payments that were made, then recalled? (Social Security requires a dead person's estate to keep the account that SS payments are dropped into to stay open for a while, so that if the person dies in January but SS isn't notified right away and drops Feb and Mar payments, those payments can be clawed back once the government receives the death certificate, for instance)
Were they payments where the government was defrauded, noticed the fraud, and is going after the perpetrator?
All I'm saying is that I wonder how much of the $3 was both 'improper' and 'permanent'.
