Tag: taxpayer dollars

Trump Reveals His Day One Plan to End Veteran Homelessness

Kaitlin Housler
Homeless Veterans

President-elect Donald Trump said he would work to end veteran homelessness on the first day of his administration by signing an executive order to redirect funds previously spent by the Biden-Harris administration on illegal aliens to be instead used to shelter and treat homeless U.S. veterans.

Throughout the Biden-Harris administration, sanctuary cities such as Chicago and New York have made headlines for housing illegal aliens in luxury hotel rooms at the cost of taxpayers.

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Commentary: Biden-Harris Admin Uses Loopholes to Expand Welfare Benefits, Again

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Family using a Tablet

It seems reasonable that a program designed to assist those with low incomes should go only to low-income households. But the Biden-Harris administration is using a dubious mechanism to get around that expectation in a program designed to help low-income families pay for broadband internet service.

Congress created the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, to provide broadband internet assistance to low-income households.

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Florida Follow-Up Audit Finds Discrepancies with Economic Incentive Programs

The Center Square

The Florida Auditor General recently published a follow-up audit of the Sunshine State’s economic incentives programs and found some uncorrected issues remain.

The Florida Department of Commerce assists the governor in working with the Legislature, state agencies, business leaders, and economic development professionals. For fiscal 2023-24, state lawmakers appropriated approximately $1.8 billion.

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Maricopa County Allocates $130,000 for ‘Community Solutions’ in East Valley

The Center Square
International Dark Sky Discovery Center

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted to allocate $130,000 in taxpayer dollars through the county’s “community solutions” fund for a variety of purposes in the East Valley on Wednesday.

One hundred thousand dollars will head toward the International Dark Sky Discovery Center for childhood education uses and admission costs, $10,000 will be used for “sign improvements” along the Hawes Trail System near Mesa within the Tonto National Forest, and $8,000 to assist the East Valley Institute of Technology’s program for small children, the board touted in a news release on Wednesday. Other funds went toward “heat relief” uses.

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Amtrak Trains Keep Breaking Down Despite Massive Injection of Taxpayer Cash

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Amtrak Train

Amtrak, the national passenger railroad company of the U.S., continues to have routine breakdowns despite receiving massive injections of taxpayer dollars from the Biden administration, according to data from the Department of Transportation (DOT).

Since 2021, there have been 333 Amtrak train incidents reported nationwide as of July 9, 2024, slightly less than the 397 incidents that occurred between 2016 and July 2020 during former President Trump’s tenure, according to the DOT. The Biden administration, as a part of an announced $66 billion for passenger rail in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, has dedicated huge amounts of taxpayer cash to Amtrak, including $4 billion being given to the rail company near the end of 2022, according to the White House.

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Georgia Lawmaker Says Fulton County DA Fani Willis Spends Taxpayer Dollars ‘Like the Wild West’

Just the News
Fani Willis

A Georgia lawmaker alleged during a hearing that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis spends taxpayer dollars “like the Wild West” and has misused public funds.

“This is sounding to me kind of like the Wild West, very little control from Fulton County over a $36 million budget,” State Sen. Bill Cowsert said after questioning Fulton County Commissioner Robb Pitts and Fulton County Chief Financial Officer Sharon Whittmore about how Willis’ office receives and spends its funds.

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Hobbs Announces Up to $30 Million in Taxpayer Dollars Aimed at Tackling Medical Debt

The Center Square
Katie Hobbs

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs launched a program on Monday aimed at “buying back” medical debt with taxpayer dollars distributed by the federal government.

The program is called “Affordable Arizona: Tackling Medical Debt for Working Families” and it is a public-private partnership between the state of Arizona and RIP Medical Debt, a national nonprofit.

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Missouri Must Continue to Fund Planned Parenthood, State Supreme Court Rules

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Missouri Supreme Court

Missouri must continue to allow taxpayer dollars to flow to Planned Parenthood, the state’s supreme court ruled on Wednesday.

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled that a 2022 state budget measure cutting Planned Parenthood off from state funds was unconstitutional, according to court documents. The legal dispute stemmed from a line in the state’s 2022 budget, which allocated $0 in Medicaid funds for any healthcare organization that provides abortions or is affiliated with an abortion provider, the Missouri Independent reported.

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Biden Admin Spent $20 Billion for Refugee Resettlement in Just Two Years

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Refugees

The Biden administration has poured billions of taxpayer dollars into the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) since October 2022, according to a new report from Open the Books.

The Biden administration spent $8.925 billion in fiscal year 2022 and $10.928 billion in fiscal year 2023 on the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at ORR to accommodate, transport, and provide migrants with various other services like medical care and loans, according to the report, which was released Tuesday. In recent months, HHS has faced scrutiny for ORR’s alleged mishandling of cases of unaccompanied migrant children, some of whom have been released to poorly vetted sponsors where they are used for child labor, according to The New York Times.

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Senators JD Vance and Marco Rubio Send Letter to U.S. Census Bureau About Its Plan of Adding Gender, Sexuality Questions for Those Ages 15 and Up

The Center Square

The U.S. Census Bureau is under fire for embracing progressive ideology around gender and sexuality and pushing for taxpayer dollars to fund it.

U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and JD Vance, R-Ohio, sent a letter to the U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Santos calling on him to rescind its plan to incorporate a gender identity and sexuality questions to the American Community Survey, which goes to more than 3.5 million Americans each year.

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Commentary: Woke U.S. Diplomacy Is Not Popular Around the Globe, nor at Home

RealClearWire

The Biden administration is fraying relations with some allies and generating pushback from Congress by spending millions of taxpayer dollars to promote the woke ideology abroad that has stirred controversy at home since President Biden took office.  

In a “national security memorandum” shortly after his swearing-in, Biden ordered all federal agencies with dealings abroad not only to protect LGBT rights in the face of discrimination and violence but to actively advance them. His State Department has said one of its goals is to “embed intersectional equity principles into diversifying public diplomacy and communications strategies” in relations with other nations. 

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U.S. Turns to Country Notorious for Child Labor and Unsafe Mines to Source Its Electric Vehicle Ambitions

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In order to facilitate electric vehicle (EV) production, the U.S. is seeking to spend taxpayer dollars to develop cobalt supply chains from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country which is known for high prevalence of unsafe child labor in its mines, many of which are controlled by Chinese interests, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of Labor (DOL) are jointly committing $23 million in taxpayer funds to U.S. firms and other mining companies to integrate local Congolese operations and “artisanal” mines into their supply chains, as well as to improve labor standards for miners in the DRC, which are essentially non-existent in most cases, according to the WSJ. Chinese-controlled interests dominate the DRC’s cobalt industry, refining about 75% of the global cobalt supply and manufacturing approximately 70% of the world’s lithium-ion batteries, which are cobalt-intensive products that power EVs.

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National Parks Sponsor Pride Marches, Create LGBTQ ‘Teaching’ Resources with Taxpayer Dollars

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Instead of spending time preserving natural history, some federally funded parks are sponsoring Pride month events and teaching LGBTQ history to the public.

Earlier this month, Yosemite National Park in California held a weeklong Pride celebration sponsored by Yosemite’s LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group. The events included a speaker series as well as a Pride march and Pride festival co-hosted by drag queen Wyn Wiley, whose stage name is Pattie Gonia. 

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In New Record, Biden Requests Billions to Advance Gender Agenda Worldwide

The Center Square
Joe Biden

President Joe Biden’s 2024 budget proposal requests billions of dollars to advance his gender and sexuality agenda around the world, allocating far more taxpayer dollars to that than dozens of other spending priorities, such as stopping fentanyl from being smuggled across the southern border.

Biden’s budget request for this issue in particular has more than doubled in the last two years. In the past, that focus would have been almost entirely on women and young girls. In recent years, though, advancing women’s rights across the globe is sharing the focus, and the funds, with the president’s gender agenda.

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Commentary: Biden Burns Taxpayer Dollars While American Wages Continue to Plummet

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Today’s jobs report shows that Americans’ real wages declined for the 20th consecutive month, and labor force participation fell for the third straight month. The numbers indicate Americans continue to suffer from falling living standards under the Biden administration.

Boosting real wages and restoring the labor force is the job of the new Congress. Unfortunately, the old Congress wants to make this task as hard as possible by doing damage on its way out.

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Critics Push Back as Biden Administration Uses Taxpayer Dollars to Grow Public Unions

The Center Square

The federal Office of Personnel Management is actively helping public unions recruit more members, and critics are calling it a major conflict of interest.

OPM recently released updates to FedScope, a public database of federal employees, that will allow union leaders to recruit those employees to grow their member rolls, and as a result, their coffers.

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Report: Wisconsin Democrat Spent Tax Dollars on Security Despite Hammering Police

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Wisconsin’s Democratic lieutenant governor, who is also running for U.S. Senate, spent hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars for a police security detail despite criticizing law enforcement in the past, Fox News reported.

Mandela Barnes, who is viewed as a heavy favorite to win his Senate primary, shelled out more than $587,000 for a state police detail between Jan. 7, 2019 and Nov. 6, 2021, according to records obtained by Fox News. The sum paid for roughly 8,800 hours of police protection, 4,900 hours for overtime protection and over 200 hours of holiday protection, the outlet reported.

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Posters on Display in California High School Classroom Display ‘F*** The Police’ and ‘F*** Amerikkka’ Phrases

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outside of Alexander Hamilton High School

A California high school classroom displayed what an anonymous parent called “disgusting brainwashing of students with taxpayer dollars” over photos that show F*** the Police and F*** Amerikkka posters and Pride and Black Lives Matter flags, according to a tip provided by a parent to Parents Defending Education.

The parent of a student at Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) shared photos of the posters and flags in the classroom with Parents Defending Education (PDE), a national grassroots organization working to fight “indoctrination in the classroom.”

Photos show an American flag lying on furniture in the classroom, while the Palestine flag, a transgender flag, a Pride flag and a Black Lives Matter flag hang prominently from the blackboard, according to the photos obtained by PDE.

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Critics Question Gov. Whitmer’s $1.3 Million Spending on Holland Private Sector Jobs

The Center Square
Mission Design and Automation, LLC

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced Thursday the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) is spending taxpayer money on private business Mission Design and Automation in Holland Charter Township.

Mission will house new large-scale automation projects and space for offices and meeting rooms, but critics argue government funds shouldn’t be used to subsidize private enterprises.

Michigan awarded the private company $400,000 in taxpayer money through the Jobs Ready Michigan Program grant. The project is expected to generate a total private investment of $5.3 million and create 109 well-paying new jobs over two years.

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