Tag Archives: Open The Books

Getting The Money Back

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On Monday, Open The Books posted an article about the fraud involving Covid payments and the efforts by the government to get back the money.

The article reports:

COVID-19 programs to help families and businesses stay afloat inadvertently diverted hundreds of billions to scammers who spent thousands on wish-list items like luxury cars and plastic surgery.

The actual amount of pandemic-related fraud, however, is unknown not only to us but also to the federal government. What’s more, the amount that the federal government has recouped makes up a scant 0.47% of the government’s fraud guestimate.

The difficulty of recouping these ill-gotten gains makes it even more critical that government programs are designed with far better guardrails in place. Scrutiny on the front end, even at some added investment, is imperative; the Covid era demonstrated that once money has left public coffers, it’s incredibly challenging to recover all or even much of it.

…Congress authorized about $4.6 trillion in emergency COVID-19 relief between 2020 and 2021 for vulnerable businesses and struggling families, but fraud was identified in at least 19 different pandemic-relief programs, according to an April 2025 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. If the government’s $300 billion fraud calculation is correct, then 6.5% of all pandemic aid was incorrectly distributed. What we have compiled is just a fraction of the hundreds of charged cases and undetected schemes.

The last update from the Department of Justice regarding how much stolen COVID-19 relief funds were seized or forfeited — over $1.4 billion — was in April of 2024. While this is described more broadly as “stolen COVID-19 relief funds” by the DOJ, the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force classifies the figure as Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) funds seized or forfeited. This means that the federal government has only recovered $10.55 per household. That leaves the remaining fraud tab nearly untouched.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The government may have had good intentions, but they messed up royally. Their efforts to help people they hurt by shutting down the government only provided avenues for dishonest people to get rich quick. The federal government is not the best vehicle for helping people in need. Local organizations have a much better idea of which needs are real.

Things That Make Me Furious

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We elected President Trump and a Republican Congress to cut government spending. The Department of Government Efficiency showed us much of the wasteful spending. Congress just passed a bunch of spending bills loaded with earmarks. Is Congress listening to the people who elected them?

On Monday, Open The Books reported:

Most universities dream of wealthy alumni who will send massive donations to their alma maters. The kind who contribute millions of dollars year after year, funding libraries, laboratories and more.

A select few universities have found such a wealthy, if unwitting, donor for 2026: the U.S. taxpayer, by way of pork-hungry senators.

Twenty-four senators requested $636 million of earmarks for the universities they attended as students. That’s more than 20% of the $3.7 billion of earmarks requested for universities in the 2026 federal budget, according to Open the Books’ review of congressional disclosures.

The list includes 13 Democrats and 11 Republicans. However, it was Republicans who requested $470 million (74%) of the cash.

The average alma mater earmark request is worth $4.9 million this year. Earmark requests for universities that are not affiliated with a senator were worth only $3 million on average.

This is a partial list:

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville
7 earmark requests worth $164.9 million

Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV)
Marshall University
9 earmark requests worth $57.5 million

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)
Washington State University
2 earmark requests worth $50.9 million

Sen. John Boozman (R-AR)
University of Arkansas-Fayetteville
2 earmark requests worth $4.3 million

The article concludes:

The government will shut down on Jan. 31 if Congress cannot agree on a 2026 federal budget. Unfortunately for taxpayers, alma mater earmarks appear to be one of the few items that lawmakers from both parties support.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) introduced an amendment on Jan. 22 to strike all earmarks from the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies bill, calling them “partisan pet projects” that are “outside the core mission” of the bill.

He was unsuccessful. Seventy-six House Republicans joined 215 Democrats in voting to keep the earmarks intact. Another eight Republicans and one Democrat abstained. The results were unsurprising, given that 31 House members secured $131 million for their own alma maters last year.

Each one gets an “F” for fiscal sanity.

This is unacceptable.

This is the link to download the full list of donations to alma maters.

Where The Money Went

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On  Saturday (updated Sunday), Just the News posted an article about where the  government’s money for healthcare has been spent.

The article reports:

More evidence has emerged showing that — despite the claims of Democrats — illegal immigrants have benefited from millions of federal tax dollars. The government watchdog group Open the Books released a new analysis that found almost $197 million in federal healthcare-related grants have benefited illegal immigrants since fiscal year 2021.

That is NOT pocket change and needs to be ended.

The article continues:

According to the report, the grants include both direct services and academic research aimed at expanding access to healthcare for immigrant populations. Open the Books’ researchers said they searched federal databases for grant descriptions that explicitly mentioned terms such as “undocumented” or “unauthorized,” suggesting that the actual total amount of taxpayer funding could be higher.

The article concludes:

Open the Books said the $197 million total does not include “indirect spending on illegal immigrants through Medicaid, which was estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to be around $27 billion from FY 2017-2023, nor does it account for education spending that benefits illegal immigrants and their children, which amounts to an estimated $70 billion annually.”

Open the Books identified about $13 million in new awards since February 2025 after the start of Trump’s second term. Under Trump, border encounters have dropped significantly amid increased federal enforcement. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “26,197 total encounters nationwide” occurred under Trump — a 93% below the peak of the Biden administration’s 370,883. 

The spending on illegal immigrants through Medicaid is what the Democrats want to continue. The fact that the Republicans will not agree to that is one of many reasons the government remains shut down.

Does This Bother Anyone Else?

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On Tuesday, The New York Post reported that the Internal Revenue Service has spent more than $5 million shoring up its arsenal for its increasingly militarized agents. What?

The article reports:

A new report shows the Internal Revenue Service has been stocking up on weapons, ammunition and combat gear to the tune of $10 million since 2020. 

The findings released last week by OpenTheBooks, a watchdog group that tracks government spending, reveal that in 2021 alone the IRS spent more than $5 million shoring up its arsenal for its increasingly militarized agents. 

Since 2020, the oversight group found, the IRS has spent $2.3 million on ammunition, $1.2 million on ballistic shields, $474,000 on Smith & Wesson rifles, $463,000 on Beretta 1301 tactical shotguns and $243,000 on body armor vests.

A slew of other line-item expenditures – include a mysterious $1.3 million spent on “various other gear for criminal investigation agents.”

Actually I think the IRS was scary enough without being armed. We went through an audit many years ago after I made a donation to the Tea Party. They audited our charitable contributions. We sent them all the records, they delayed their conclusion twice before finding nothing wrong, and then informed us that the case wasn’t actually closed. It was basically an intimidation tactic. I really don’t think they need to be armed.

The article also notes:

The IRS is also in the midst of a hiring spree, with current openings to hire 360 criminal investigators based in all 50 states. 

The agency notes that applicants must be willing to “carry a firearm; must be prepared to protect him/herself or others from physical attacks at any time and without warning and use firearms in life-threatening situations; must be willing to use force up to and including the use of deadly force.”

The IRS has said that its special agents are armed because they consistently are involved in organized crime, drug and gang investigations. 

President Biden provided the agency with more than $80 billion in new funding as part of the $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act he signed in August.

The IRS argument does not hold up–we have law enforcement agencies that can deal with organized crime, drug and gang investigations. The purpose of the IRS is to collect taxes. I don’t know enough about a flat tax to support it, but it may actually be time to abolish the IRS if they are going to become a bunch of armed bullies.

Pulling Back The Curtain On An Unhealthy Alliance

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On Monday, The Epoch Times reported that a watchdog group called “Open the Books” had discovered that an estimated $350 million in undisclosed royalties were paid to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and hundreds of its scientists, including the agency’s recently departed director, Dr. Francis Collins, and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The article reports:

The first five years, from 2010 to 2014, constitute 40 percent of the total, he said.

“We now know that there are 1,675 scientists that received payments during that period, at least one payment. In fiscal year 2014, for instance, $36 million was paid out and that is on average $21,100 per scientist,” Andrzejewski said.

“We also find that during this period, leadership at NIH was involved in receiving third-party payments. For instance, Francis Collins, the immediate past director of NIH, received 14 payments. Dr. Anthony Fauci received 23 payments and his deputy, Clifford Lane, received eight payments.”

Collins resigned as NIH director in December 2021 after 12 years of leading the world’s largest public health agency. Fauci is the longtime head of NIH’s National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), as well as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden. Lane is the deputy director of NIAID, under Fauci.

The top five NIH employees measured in terms of the number of royalty payments that they received while on the government payroll, according to a fact sheet published by Open the Books, include Robert Gallo, National Cancer Institute, 271 payments; Ira Pastan, National Cancer Institute, 250 payments; Mikulas Popovic, National Cancer Institute, 191 payments; Flossie Wong-Staal, National Cancer Institute, 190 payments; and Mangalasseril Sarngadharan, National Cancer Institute, 188 payments.

Only Pastan continues to be employed by NIH, according to Open the Books.

The article concludes:

Open the Books is a Chicago-based nonprofit government watchdog that uses the federal and state freedom of information laws to obtain and then post on the internet trillions of dollars in spending at all levels of government.

The nonprofit filed a federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit seeking documentation of all payments by outside firms to NIH and/or current and former NIH employees.

NIH declined to respond to the FOIA, so Open the Books is taking the agency to court, suing it for noncompliance with the FOIA. Open the Books is represented in federal court in the case by another nonprofit government watchdog, Judicial Watch.

It is not news to anyone that many of the Covid guidelines coming from the National Institute of Health had a very tenuous relationship to science. It would be a good idea to follow the money and see if that money can be cut off as a means of influence.

How Much Military Equipment Did We Leave Behind?

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Our obvious priority as a country should be to get all Americans and Afghans who helped America out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible. However, as we do that, we should consider how much military equipment we left behind for the Taliban (equipment that will be reverse engineered by the Russians and the Chinese and put to use by the Iranians).

Yesterday Just the News posted an article with the numbers. Congratulations, American taxpayers, you are now funding the military of the Taliban, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and China.

The article reports:

The U.S. military is leaving behind 75,000 vehicles, 600,000 weapons and 208 airplanes/helicopters in Afghanistan as the Taliban takes control of the country, according to the watchdog group Open the Books.

“We’ve made the Taliban into a major U.S. arms dealer for the next decade,” said Adam Andrzejewski, CEO & founder of Open the Books. “They now control 75,000 military vehicles. This is about 50,000 tactical vehicles, 20,000 Humvees they control about 1,000 mine-resistant vehicles, and even about 150 armored personnel carriers.”

In total, the U.S. government spent an estimated $83 billion of taxpayer funds on weapons, vehicles and airplanes for the Afghan military. 

…Andrzejewski said his organization “found a Federal Audit that detailed up to $200 million worth of drones that had disappeared,” adding that “we don’t know where 600,000 weapons are within the country.” 

The Taliban also reportedly has access to biometrics data of Afghans that helped U.S. forces during the war.

The last sentence is the one that scares me the most. We have turned those people over to the Taliban to be tortured and killed.

Hope For The Deficit

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Yesterday The Daily Caller reported that the Trump administration’s budget for fiscal year 2021 will take steps to curb what it calls “wasteful” government spending, including cutting funds for, and in some cases outright eliminating, dozens of federal programs, grants and endowments, documents reviewed by the Daily Caller show.

The article reports:

For the first time, the budget features an entire chapter devoted to saving taxpayers’ money and defines five clear categories of waste requiring attention.

The administration used new guidelines to identify fiscally inefficient programs. The cuts will target agencies with overlapping and similar goals, agencies that provide similar or identical services to the same group of recipients, programs without a clearly defined federal role, federal programs that mirror state-level initiatives and erroneous payments.

The budget calls for eliminating the following programs entirely:

    • National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s Education and Research Centers
    • Department of the Interior’s Highlands Conservation Act Grants
    • National Park Service’s Save America’s Treasures Grants
    • National Endowment for the Arts Endowment for the Humanities
    • Corporation for National and Community Service (including AmeriCorps)

The administration also identified several categories of government spending in desperate need of additional government oversight, including travel, employee conferences or workshops, subscriptions, marketing, entertainment, office refreshments and end-of-year “Use It or Lose It” spending. The chapter cites expenditures by 67 federal agencies from December 30-31, 2018 which totaled $97 billion and included more than $15 million worth of fine china, lobster, alcohol, recreational, musical, and workout equipment.

The article notes that the President has had assistance in setting out his program:

The nonprofit group Open the Books, which assisted OMB in calculating spending inefficiencies, lauded the administration for “declaring war on federal waste.”

“The president’s budget to Congress is the first step toward defending the American taxpayer and stopping egregious waste, fraud, duplication, and taxpayer abuse. It’s a target rich environment,” said Open the Books CEO Adam Andrzejewski when asked about the cuts. “Our team of auditors at OpenTheBooks.com is very proud that our oversight reporting and examples of federal taxpayer abuse are being used by the president and the Office of Management and Budget to spearhead cuts. We applaud the president for taking action.”

Getting this done would be an incredible accomplishment and eventually a real benefit to American taxpayers.