Real waste, fraud and abuse

Hardly a week goes by that we don’t get a press release from our United States Senators, Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, hoopin’ and hollerin’ about waste, fraud and abuse in various government programs.

Just last Friday we received a release from Grassley, “Tackling Fraud and Fighting for Whistleblowers.” “The U.S. Treasury is not a piggy bank,” it stated. The week before, we got an email from Ernst crabbing about a loophole that allows food stamps to be used to buy fast food. We can’t have poor people eating hamburgers. Of course, she blamed it on former President Joe Biden.

Funny thing is, all this supposed waste, fraud and abuse seems to come at the hands of people on welfare or Medicaid, single mothers with children to raise. A favorite target recently has been daycare centers in Minnesota run by Somali immigrants.

If there is waste, fraud and abuse, we’re all in favor of clamping down on it — all of it, rich and poor.

But we never hear from our honorable Senators about any waste, fraud and abuse from their friends, the well-heeled folks who give them money.

Not a word about more than two dozen rich tech titans who were sentenced to prison for fraud, but miraculously were granted pardons by President Trump after they made donations to him. A few of note: Trevor Milton, defrauded investors of $660 million; Changpeng Zhao, billionaire cryptocurrency mogul who made illegal trades; Michele Fiore, embezzled from police memorial fund; Paul Walczak, $7 million tax fraud; Lawrence Duran, defrauded Medicare of $205 million. They didn’t have to make restitution, either.

Or the new Air Force One, supposedly a gift from Qatar that would cost American taxpayers nothing — except for about a billion dollars to make it airworthy after the Secret Service revealed that it wasn’t safe to fly outside the United States.

Let’s not forget the White House ballroom. Trump told us it would cost taxpayers nothing. The $250 million cost was to have been met by big donors. Then we find out it will cost nearly a billion dollars, paid by taxpayers.

There’s the massive 250 feet tall Triumphal Arch near the Lincoln Memorial. Nobody thinks we need it, but it’s going to be built anyway at a cost to taxpayers of more than $100 million.

How about the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial? Repairs were supposed to cost $1.5 million. After a no-bid $15 million contract, the pool leaks, the water system doesn’t recirculate properly, promoting algae growth worse than Storm Lake this summer, and we are all on the hook for this. Trump, of course, tried to blame all the problems on a supposed “vandal” with a pocket knife, but Friday charges were dropped when it turned out the Departments of Interior and Justice lied in their court filings. The “vandal” was completely innocent.

Earlier this year Trump tried to get the Treasury Department to give him $10 billion for leaking his tax returns 10 years ago, until a federal court ruled he couldn’t do that.

The Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol, smeared their poop on the walls and injured 150 police officers? They were let out of jail and given walking around money to boot.

We won’t even hazard a guess as to how much the Iran war is costing. Secretary Of “War” Pete Hegseth told Congress a couple of weeks ago that it was $35 billion so far, but no one believes that. Some experts put the figure closer to $1 trillion. And the greatest cost of all are the lives of the 18 soldiers who have been killed so far, plus 400 more injured.

There’s much more evidence of waste, fraud and abuse that’s overlooked, but you get the picture.

So Chuck and Joni, keep on whining about how some poor widow beat the government out of 20 bucks in food stamps in Minneapolis, while the Treasury is being looted of billions right under your eyes by your friends down Pennsylvania Avenue.