Tag Archives: Education Department

Moving From Accepting Benefits To Theft

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On Thursday, Issues & Insights posted an article wondering how easy it is to steal from the American government.

The article reports:

Some of us are old enough to remember Matthew Lesko, the lanky, fast-talking late-night TV pitchman who promised people free government money to those who bought his books.

There are, Lesko said in one of his countless ads decades ago, “15,000 programs you can use to get a better job, get an education, or start your own business. Those who know about the programs are the ones who get the money!”

The article notes:

But Minnesota is hardly the only place where scammers have gone way beyond what Matthew Lesko promised in his books.

As Charles Silver and David Hyman note in the City Journal,

Frauds against government health-care programs are both common and costly. Fraudsters routinely scam (Medicare and Medicaid) for billions of dollars. States themselves run schemes of their own. COVID-related frauds, for example, exceeded $280 billion, with another $123 billion wasted or misspent. Obamacare enrollment fraud is pervasive, likely costing taxpayers $27 billion in 2025 and $21 billion in 2024.

California is under federal criminal investigation for wasting $37 billion to fight homelessness. It lost $20 billion in COVID-19-related federal unemployment money — the most of any state. Nearly half of the state’s increase in Medicaid spending went to pay for health care for illegal aliens. And it’s under investigation to see where the $4 billion in federal money for California’s never-ending bullet train project ended up.

Fox News reports that the Education Department found that “during a 12-month period between 2024 and 2025, scammers stole at least $10 million in federal financial aid from community colleges in California.”

The article concludes:

Why is it so easy to steal from the federal government? Because, unlike a private business, nobody in government really cares if money is wasted. Who has lost their job after some major scam was uncovered?

Plus, as we pointed out in this space, fraud is good for big-government types because it creates new constituents and new sources of campaign cash.

The answer to this problem isn’t just to unleash armies of auditors and federal police. It’s to close the spigot entirely.

The federal government spends more than $3.6 trillion on what it calls “direct payments for individuals” and another $833 billion in grants to states that are supposed to end up in individual pockets.

That’s about two-thirds of the entire federal budget!

As long as there’s that much money flying around, fraudsters will flourish. And taxpayers will be bilked.

It’s time to act on the waste and fraud that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) found. People are never as careful with other people’s money as they are with their own money.

This Might Backfire

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On Thursday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about President Biden’s new plan to forgive student loan debt.

This is the headline from the article:

American workers – are YOU happy to pay $1,800 EACH to wipe the student debt of the privileged elite who’ll earn $52,000 a year? Because BRAD POLUMBO reveals that’s your bill for desperate Joe’s naked bribe for votes

The article reports:

‘Congratulations! I erased your student loans. Now will you vote for me?’

That’s what President Biden should have said in an email to more than 800,000 student loan borrowers – because his latest scheme to ‘forgive’ some of their $1.78 trillion in outstanding debts is nothing more than a bribe.

‘Your student loan has been forgiven because of actions my Administration took to make sure you receive the relief you earned and deserve,’ read the White House message sent to in-boxes on Tuesday.

Gee – Democrats are so generous with other people’s money.

What had these lucky few done to ‘earn’ and ‘deserve’ this multi-billion dollar ‘relief?’

Very little.

In a bit of bureaucratic sleight of hand, Biden and his dutiful ministerial assistants transformed an obscure Education Department repayment program into a brand new entitlement program.

The monthly payments of hundreds of thousands of borrowers will be capped at five percent of discretionary income, and if they pay these tiny installments for 10 to 20 years their entire remaining loan will be wiped away.

This move is aimed at college students and graduates ages 18-34. This is a demographic that is not generally supporting President Biden.

However, according to the Census Bureau, only 35 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 29 vote, and 48 percent of people between the ages of 30 and 44 vote. Almost 60 percent of people between the ages of 45 and 64 vote, and 66 percent of people over 65 vote. It is quite possible that those over the ages of 45 learned critical thinking in school–something that is rarely taught now. If the people over 45 realize that they are paying for this student loan forgiveness program, it is very possible that they will turn out to cancel the votes of the younger people benefitting from the program. It is also possible that those in the age group that will benefit will include enough people who didn’t go to college that are angry about paying for someone else’s education that they could not afford for themselves.

At any rate, please follow the link to read the entire article. It will be interesting to see if this actually works or backfires. Meanwhile, we should mention that it is entirely unconstitutional.

Creating Policies That Are Unconstitutional

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On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about a new policy that the Biden administration is creating. Recently, Forsyth County Public Schools (FCPS), a school district outside of Atlanta, reviewed their school libraries to flag age-inappropriate sexual material for removal.

The article explains what happened next:

Though the review process focused exclusively on sexual content and ended with the return of nearly all of the books under inspection to school library shelves, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) nevertheless opened an investigation into whether the district’s book review had created a “hostile environment” based on race and sex that the school district had unlawfully failed to remedy.

Rather than invite federal sanctions, FCPS cut short this investigation by entering into a resolution agreement with OCR. One particularly concerning provision of that “voluntary” agreement requires the school district to issue a statement reassuring students “that the District strives to provide a global perspective and promote diversity” in curating its library catalog — despite the fact that no federal civil rights law mandates such acts of worship at the altar of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion.

On June 8, the White House made clear that the FCPS matter was not an isolated investigation, announcing that OCR will appoint a new “coordinator” to warn state and local education agencies that heeding parents’ calls to remove sexually explicit books from school libraries could trigger the agency’s enforcement authority, including the withholding of federal funding.

The article concludes:

The Biden Education Department’s illegal interference in school library decisions is calculated to intimidate parents and school districts that want to ensure children do not read graphic sexual content at school. The real civil rights violation at issue here is OCR’s impermissible chilling of First Amendment rights regarding what books are appropriate for public school students. The president’s claimed authority to silence concerned parents and restrain school districts from curating library books is nothing more than fiction.

Something is very wrong here. What kind of people want our school students reading sexually explicit material? What are they attempting to do to the minds of the children? At this point, any parent with any common sense needs to remove their children from public schools.