Donald Trump’s administration is threatening to withdraw federal funding for unemployment assistance in all 50 states as part of the president’s nationwide campaign against “fraud” in government spending.
In a letter to the governors of 53 states and territories, acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling warned that the federal government would use “every available tool” to combat “waste, fraud and abuse” within state-run unemployment insurance programs, including “withholding administrative funds from states” for the first time in history.
There is no single national program for unemployment support, though the federal government partners with state agencies to support temporary financial assistance to out-of-work Americans. Nearly 2 million people are currently receiving those benefits, while roughly 229,000 people are filing initial jobless claims every week, according to the Labor Department.
This stunt actually has nothing to do with “fraud” in government spending, but as someone with experience in government procurement, contracting is where the waste is. The government actually doesn’t do too badly when we keep the work in-house. It’s these multimillion dollar contracts to some private company that are where the waste, fraud, and abuse are. Go fucking audit SpaceX. Revisit those contracts. Bet we can save billions every year on just one companies stupid fucking defense contracts. Then go after the rest of these contractors. Threaten to bring the work back in house and see how they react. Follow through and actually bring the work back in house, build the public sector engineering and manufacturing expertise, and see where we are.
Contracting as in having the reflection pool painted?