Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been moving at a tornado pace searching for fraud and financial abuses in our federal government, going department by department and slashing contracts, employees, and freezing payments that appear to be fraudulent or abusive. To date they list about $55 billion in cuts and savings. They face massive resistance from the Democratic side of the aisle, or at least the far left of their party. As of February 14th, 2025, less than a month into his presidency Trump has been served with 74 lawsuits from the left (79 as of the 20th), trying to slow or stop the impetus of his actions.
The left has filed at least 58 of the suits in Federal District Courts in Washington DC, Boston, Seattle, and suburban Maryland, all courts with majorities of liberal, left leaning judges appointed by Democratic presidents. They feed into Appellate Courts with similar ideological bents. The lawsuits focus on new immigration policies, the cutting of federal agencies or employees, civil rights protections, diversity programs, birthright citizenship, and the Department of Government Efficiency. Yet of all those lawsuits filed in what has been labelled "lawfare" only 17 resulted in judges issuing temporary "stays" until the issues can be litigated fully. As of this writing several of those have already been overturned.
DOGE maintains a website showing what fraud and abuses they've found, and it is constant fodder, or fuel, for attacks from the left. They claim DOGE claims are exaggerated, and indeed they may be, but at the same time their attacks are fully exaggerated also. Let's take a look at just one claim by DOGE and the resulting responses from the left, then we will try to apply the facts, as best we know them, to the situation...
DOGE listed on their website that they found about 18 million Americans who were born in 1920 or before, intimating that there was a large number of fraudulent payouts happening and they needed to stop them. Democrats immediately responded with statements claiming the Trump administration and DOGE were trying to cut social security benefits to seniors- a very scary sentiment to a large number of our population. So, what is the truth?
According to a high-level Social Security Administrator that high number of people do exist on the SSA roles, however, it is a bookkeeping issue- they haven't been able to purge them because the "Deceased" box was never checked so the system won't remove them. According to SSA 98% of all those people do not receive any benefits from SSA, so DOGE is misrepresenting the problem. However, no benefits cuts to existing recipients have been suggested, making the Dems' claims false scare tactics. But, knowing now what we know, what is the fraud or abuse happening at SSA in this instance alone? Let's do the math...
Two percent of eighteen million is 360,000 recipients that SSA says are actively receiving benefits. According to the latest census figures in 2021 there were 89,739 people alive who were 100 years old or older. Let's call it 90,000 to keep numbers simple. If there are 90,000 receiving benefits legally then that means there are 270,000 fraudulent payments going out each month. If we conservatively assess a claim at $1500 monthly, times 270,000 we get $4.05 million dollars a month in fraudulent payments in this category alone, or $4.86 billion dollars a year in waste. Yet the question we need to ask, and find answers to, is, "Who is receiving and cashing these checks"? The other fact to remember is, this is just one category of many, spanning numerous departments.
One more example I'll share is as follows: Staci Abrams, once Georgia hopeful for the office of Governor, started an NGO and in 2023 they had revenues of $100. In 2024 her NGO received a grant from the Biden Administration for TWO BILLION DOLLARS! That's BILLION, with a B!!! Clearly some sort of explanation is needed, an accounting of these funds, for it looks like political cronyism at its best, outright fraud at its worst. There are far too many similar examples that we need explanations for or retributions for those who receive such payouts...The American people deserve to know how our tax monies are being spent.
Food for thought...
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