President Donald J. Trump hit Washington, DC running when he pledged to ‘Drain the Swamp’ and rid the federal government of waste. The taxpayers are ready for a new Tea Party to help President Trump defeat the Swamp and their allies in Congress. The time is now to fix the problem.
While President Trump is trying to end the war in Afghanistan, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) discovered that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had wasted $34 million on “a program that has included providing subpar textbooks to Afghan schoolchildren.” This is part of a 5-year program that is expected to cost the taxpayer almost $70 million, yet the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found “principals and teachers at a quarter of the schools inspected stated, ‘that the books were no longer in usable condition.” The books had loose and blank pages, numerous misspellings and the books were of low quality. Some government bureaucrat spent $34 million on a program that turned out to be a complete waste of money.
The Pentagon is not immune to waste in the form of overly expensive contracts. The U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) is considering continuing a $31 billion contract for 200 CH-53 King Stallion helicopters that cost $138.5 million per vehicle. The problems with this helicopter are many. They have had safety issues and is the most costly aircraft in the military’s air fleet. Air Force Times reported on a Defense Department report that concluded, “airspeed indication anomalies, low reliability of main rotor gearbox, hot gas impingement on aircraft structures, tail boom and tail rotor structural problems, overheating of main rotor dampers, fuel system anomalies, high temperatures in the #2 engine bay, and hot gas ingestion by the #2 engine, which could reduce available power.” Not a problem for a government bureaucrat who does not have to pay for an overpriced flying lemon, the $31 billion project is forging forward.
Look at what Congress snuck into the CARES Act that was intended on putting people back to work and on their feet to the tune of $2 trillion of borrowed cash. The Unemployment Insurance program is a complete mess. Business Insider reported that while many have not gotten benefits that they are entitled to, “KOIN 6 News, a CBS-affiliate in Oregon, reported on Tuesday that one self-employed man who had waited nearly three months to receive unemployment benefits found 37 checks in his mailbox one day in early June. They totaled about $14,000 — double what he was owed by the Oregon Employment Department.” Aside from the errors, the program has design flaws. CNBC reported that under the CARES Act, “those eligible to collect unemployment in their state would get an extra $600 a week in benefits for up to four months. That payment is quite generous, experts said — about 156% larger than the current $385-a-week nationwide average.” This provision gives low- and moderate-income Americans an incentive to stay unemployed because they get paid more than if they go back to work.
The stimulus checks that many Americans received was also a mess. The Washington Post reported that $1.4 billion, more than 1 million checks, were sent to people who are dead. Bureaucrats never picked up on the fact that they have a database full of dead people and that will lead to people trying to impersonate the dead and cashing some of these checks. There are some staggering cases of outright fraud. These are exactly the reasons why the D.C. Swamp needs to be drained.
President Donald J. Trump will need a second term to Drain the Swamp. From wasteful spending, bloated federal contracts and botched implementation of the CARES Act are good examples of why America needs a tough leader who will fight back against a Deep State of bureaucrats who love to waste taxpayer cash.
