Every American Needs To Cheer For DOGE. This Waste Is Unacceptable

When I first learned of the Department of Government Efficiency formation, I was all for it. I knew there was plenty of government waste to go around, but I have to admit that I have been literally stunned by the amount of money being wasted, lost, and totally unaccounted for.

This is not waste; This is criminal waste, fraud, and embezzlement that needs to be pursued and prosecuted. The amount of money that has been misdirected is mind-blowing. Let me put this as gently as possible, we as Americans have been getting screwed by crooked government agencies for decades. What’s sad is most of us suspected as much, but the numbers that are being uncovered are staggering. That being said, we have no idea what the actual tally will be, and we never will because the length and depth of the corruption can’t be calculated.

We Americans have become numb to money amounts. For instance, when sports fans hear that Patrick Mahomes will earn around $66 million next year, we naively nod our heads and say, “Well, he probably deserves it.” Which is absolutely ridiculous. This means that he earns just under $3,900,000 per game based on a 17-game schedule, or put another way, he earns over $1.2 million per week.

I don’t want to single Mahomes out. Salaries in pro football are what they are, but occasionally, we need to revisit how absolutely nuts the numbers have become. I can tell you this: I would be thrilled if I won a thousand dollars, as I’m sure many Americans would be. That said, we would need to win a thousand dollars 1,200 times every week to earn what Mahomes makes.

Let’s be honest: no professional athlete today deserves the money they are making. The most Willy Mays made was $165,000 annually; Hank Aaron $250,000 and Roberto Clemente $150,000. Yes, times are different, but there is no way to justify the salaries of today’s sports stars.

At least professional sports are entertaining, but nothing is amusing about government waste. Especially when the amounts dwarf even the most ridiculous sports numbers. There was a time when hearing about a billion or a trillion dollars was rare, but it’s not anymore. Now, we hear those terms thrown around so often that we have become unfazed by them.  

FEMA, in one form or another, can be traced back to 1803. The first federal disaster relief legislation in U.S. history was enacted following a devastating fire in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in December 1802. The fire destroyed large areas of the city’s seaport, threatening commerce in the newly established nation. In 1803, the U.S. Congress took action by providing relief to affected Portsmouth merchants by suspending their bond payments for several months.

In 1979, President Carter signed Executive Order 12127 on April 1, establishing FEMA. Shortly after, he signed Executive Order 12148 on July 20, giving the agency a dual mission of emergency management and civil defense.

The Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Amendments of 1988 further defined and expanded the agency’s authority. These amendments revised the Disaster Relief Act of 1974 and renamed it the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Stafford Act). This act provided clear guidance for emergency management and established the current legal framework for disaster response and recovery through presidential disaster declarations.

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, significantly transformed the landscape of homeland security and emergency management. These events prompted significant statutory and policy changes aimed at reorganizing the federal government. In 2002, President George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act, which led to establishing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The DHS was officially created on March 1, 2003, bringing together FEMA and 21 other organizations.

Over the years, the organization has become bloated and undisciplined without a clear sense of accountability. Numerous government reports on its spending show that FEMA has mismanaged tens of billions of dollars over the years.

The agency’s response to COVID-19, hurricanes, floods, and the housing of migrants has been criticized for being wasteful and largely unmonitored. Because of these reports, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been tasked with investigating the agency’s spending.

What they have uncovered so far has revealed an astronomical misappropriation of funds. Between 2020 and 2023 a recent audit of the organization showed it had mismanaged almost $10 billion during the COVID pandemic.

FEMA approved a grant of $1.1 billion, even though the request was supported by just one piece of paper. The paper didn’t even include itemized costs, according to a January 30 audit by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General. The report, which spans 36 pages, also noted that the request was “not prepared by a licensed professional engineer or cost-estimating professional.”

During the same audit, it was discovered that $1.5 billion was paid out “for one state’s medical staffing” without proper vetting and “could have been put to better use for other disasters.”

The report did not name the states that received the funds but did state that:

“These issues occurred due to the unprecedented circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and FEMA not following established requirements when delivering public assistance funding.”

It also found that $8.1 billion distributed by FEMA are “costs that have yet to be determined allowable.”

How bad of shape is FEMA in? Garret Graves, a former Republican Congressman from Louisiana who was a favorite to lead the agency, told The Post on Monday that he did not want it.

“What we sometimes fail to remember is that in the aftermath of a disaster, there are victims, and this bureaucracy has just continued to re-victimize those victims.  I appreciate the gesture, but it’s such a dysfunctional bureaucracy that I don’t think I would last a month.”

He added that he supports Musk’s plans to streamline the agency.

Yesterday morning, I wrote a column about how FEMA had spent $59 million in one week to house Illegals in New York hotels. As a result of that unlawful payment, four FEMA employees were fired yesterday afternoon. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the firings included the chief financial officer, two program analysts, and a grant specialist. A request was also made to send the money back.

Previous audits have shown that FEMA has paid more than $1.4 billion for housing and other migrant aid over the last two years. In 2023, a report written by the DHS Office of the Inspector General indicated that $110 million in humanitarian relief funds were given to local organizations. It concluded that those organizations didn’t use the funds as they were required to, couldn’t provide the necessary receipts or documentation, and that some of the aid went to illegal aliens.

In October, Alejandro Mayorkas, who was the secretary of Homeland Security at the time, faced criticism for stating that FEMA lacked sufficient funds to get through the Atlantic hurricane season. This statement came after Hurricane Helene swept through southeastern states, followed closely by Hurricane Milton hitting Florida, which resulted in damages estimated at up to $60 billion. Those were personal. We live on the beach, and our area has avoided a direct Hurricane hit for over a hundred years. Then, we were pummeled with two category-three storms in thirteen days. It was brutal.

In a letter to Secretary Mayorkas, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz criticized the response to the Helene and Milton disasters, stating, “FEMA has wasted taxpayer funds, misappropriated resources, and left federal, state, and local responders without deployment orders on the ground.”

The letter referenced sources from “whistleblowers in various emergency management roles.”

In August of last year, bureaucracy at its worst was on display when another audit found that the agency had wasted $7 billion in “unliquidated funds that could potentially be returned to the Disaster Relief Fund” because FEMA agents did not follow the proper processes.

“Also, federal regulations and FEMA guidance provide no incentive to close out grants in a timely manner or consequences for failure to do so,” said the summer 2024 audit, meaning money was in the accounts of states who did not need it.

In addition, the report showed that “federal regulations and FEMA guidance provide no incentive to close out grants in a timely manner or consequences for failure to do so.” This means money was in the accounts of states that did not need it, and no guidelines or timetables were established as to how and when the funds needed to be returned.

“Without improved oversight and stronger policies, billions of dollars of unliquidated funds that could otherwise be returned…will remain obligated to state, territorial, tribal or local governments and unavailable for use in providing relief in connection with current disasters,” the audit stated.

Unbelievably, the report added it had also “reviewed a sample of 20 other grants and identified approximately $32.8 billion in improper payments.”

In 2017, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee documented FEMA’s lack of transparency and wasteful spending. That congressional committee found the agency wasted millions in purchasing mobile homes for temporarily displaced victims of floods and hurricanes.

The homes cost up to $150,000 each to build and maintain for a year and a half. However, the committee found that the agency typically gave or sold them away after their use. According to the committee, FEMA deactivated 4,350 such homes after a flood in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2016.

It seems that investigation after investigation has found negligence or corruption in FEMA’s handling of vast amounts of taxpayer-funded money. Why has nothing been done to stop this after all of these years? DOGE needs the full support of every government official and the public’s complete backing to end this irresponsibility.

FEMA’s budget is $65 billion for fiscal year 2025. If this agency isn’t restructured from top to bottom and overseen by responsible patriots, how much of that will be needlessly wasted?