The News Brief: February 18th, 2025

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Good morning!

I hope you all had a Happy Valentine's and President’s Day weekend!

This weekend I’ve been at a retreat so this news brief will be short. There’s never a shortage of news but a few articles are worth mentioning. 

What’s Inside?

• Even more fraudulent DOGE

• Cuts to HUD, more expensive housing on the way

• Vampires on Social Security?

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Bay Area News

Just a few days ago three people with MAGA hats and DOGE jackets walked into San Francisco City Hall demanding information be handed to them. City staff refused and called the sheriffs. The impersonators fled before the sheriffs arrived. DOGE should not be normalized as a legitimate government agency that is serious about cutting waste. Their role is to destroy the Federal administrative state that provides many important services to average Americans. It’s about making it easier to control the federal government and contracting out to their select allies. Their real mission is to enable the largest scale of corruption we’ve seen. 

People interested in holding their governments accountable for their financial spending should start with two important documents, the recent budget and comprehensive annual finance report (CAFR). Budgets forecast revenue for the next fiscal year, or two, and allocate money for departments, programs, and projects. This is where a city will highlight its financial and service priorities. A CAFR on the other hand looks back after the fiscal year ends to analyze financial performance and is audited by an independent auditor. With these two documents, you can investigate where and how the public dollars are being spent. Community members should be 100% confident that their tax dollars are being used wisely for their benefit. Perhaps elected officials and local governments need to find more engaging ways to inform the public.

Federal News

More purges are coming to the federal government. This time the Housing and Urban Development Department is being targeted. Reports say the goal is to cut 50% of staff across HUD but some teams in particular are looking at losing 75% of their staff. “Gaines said one HUD office that could lose most of its employees manages programs on homelessness, affordable housing and disaster recovery. Another enforces civil rights laws, and a third provides research on housing issues and HUD programs.”

At a time when Americans are concerned about the high cost of living, these actions will make housing affordability worse. The federal government, through HUD, is the largest source of funding for subsidized affordable housing. This isn’t just Section 8 housing vouchers, but direct funds for construction, renovations, energy efficiency, and resilience to disasters. Is it accurate to call something a saving if the investment made would have returned far more benefits? The recent fires in California and increasing extreme weather patterns will ensure people in disaster areas will have fewer resources to rebuild. 

Over the last few days, Musk has claimed to have found rampant fraud at the Social Security Agency (SSA) after claiming to have found 150-year-olds receiving benefits. He even tweeted about how Twilight might be real and there might be vampires on SSA benefits. Unsurprisingly, many experts explained that the unusual ages found in the system are a result of the coding language used, COBOL, which defaults the date to May 20th, 1875 when dates are missing or input incorrectly. How do we know the SSA isn’t just sending out checks to people who aren’t alive anymore? There are a few measures in place and data that show measures are helping. First, Musk posted a total of 400 million social security accounts, but what he didn’t mention, or know, is that only 80 million in the country receive benefits. Second, SSA automatically stops payments on people aged 115. Third, “A report written by the SSA’s inspector general in 2023 found that 98 percent of those aged 100 or older in the Social Security databases are not (emphasis added) in receipt of any benefits.” 

At the federal level, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has been responsible for auditing, evaluating, and investigating fraud and waste since July 1, 1921. Modern Inspector Generals were added to departments after Watergate to help prevent mismanagement and abuse of power. Together, these two resources already do the work of finding fraud and waste while also providing informed recommendations on eliminating them. If the new administration is interested in government efficiency, why was one of their first moves to fire multiple independent inspector generals? Why would the new president create DOGE when the GAO has been working on government efficiency for 100 years? There are thousands of reports on fraud, waste, investigations, and recommendations from the GAO but conservatives have shown little interest in them to date. This is about centralizing power within the president and using the government to target his political opponents. By usurping Congress’s power of the purse and legislation he leaves them no power when they have shown themselves unwilling to hold him accountable through impeachment. The United States where the president holds all the power is not a republic, it’s an autocracy, it’s un-American.

Thank you for reading! If you found this helpful, please share with one person, and share your thoughts in the comment section.

Until next time!

With regards,

Victor Flores
The Ramble