DOGE Catch-All

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Mulberry Heel said:
Of course. And then people like Musk can move in and profit. That's what a good chunk of this is about - privatizing public programs so they can buy them up and profit from them while the people they helped suffer and have to pay more for their services.
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If the Russians did it, this regime will try it, and/or endorse it. I continue to suspect it’ll get violent before any hope of sane governance returns to the US. It’s already highly suspicious what Don meant by “Elon is good with the computers and voting machines” and “we have our little secret, don’t we Mike?”, and now they are running roughshod over law left and right, and subsuming the USPS, ie the source of a massive percentage of democratic votes.
 
www.nytimes.com

Marshals Escort DOGE Team Into African Aid Agency

A day earlier, U.S. African Development Foundation workers had refused entry to Department of Government Efficiency workers and the State Department official in charge of foreign aid.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

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“… Thursday’s takeover of the small foundation, which has about 55 employees and an annual budget of about $45 million, came after a weekslong standoff between administration officials and the foundation’s leaders. The leaders refused to succumb to the efforts of Mr. Marocco and the Department of Government of Efficiency team, overseen by Elon Musk, to assume control of their functions, dismiss staff members and install Mr. Marocco as the acting leader.

… The White House disputed the accusation that it had done anything unlawful, insisting that President Trump had ordered the staff to be reduced to a statutory minimum and appointed Mr. Marocco to be the acting chairman of the board.

“Entitled, rogue bureaucrats have no authority to defy executive orders by the president of the United States or physically bar his representatives from entering the agencies they run,” said Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman.

… Before it became a target of the Trump administration, the U.S. African Development Foundation distributed federal grants of up to $250,000 directly to grass-roots enterprises and social entrepreneurs in Africa. But on Feb. 19, President Trump issued an executive orderspecifically naming the foundation as one of a handful of entities he had decided were “unnecessary” — prompting Mr. Musk’s team to begin trying to cull the bulk of its programs, over the objections of the staff and the board.

Mr. Brehm’s suit accuses officials working with Mr. Musk of initially trying to enter the foundation under false pretenses and flout statutory requirements preventing them from liquidating the board and slashing the foundation’s funding.

Mr. Brehm and other members of the board refused to defer to their authority, according to the complaint, even reinstalling Mr. Brehm as the foundation’s president after Mr. Marocco appointed himself to the role in an acting capacity.

… The standoff on Wednesday lasted about an hour, according to media reports. On Thursday, it appeared that DOGE representatives were still in the foundation’s offices several hours after they arrived.“
 
Heard about this a couple days ago. I was skeptical that it was true, but it appears to be.

Doesn't seem worthy of its own thread.

U.S. spent fuel liability jumps to $44.5 billion

The Department of Energy’s estimated overall liability for failing to dispose of the country’s commercial spent nuclear fuel jumped as much as 10 percent this year, from a range of $34.1 billion to $41 billion in 2023 to a range of $37.6 billion to $44.5 billion in 2024, according to a financial audit of the DOE’s Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF) for fiscal year 2024.

The estimated liability excludes $11.1 billion already paid out to nuclear power plant owners and utilities for the DOE’s breach of the standard contract for the disposal of spent fuel (10 CFR Part 961), which required the DOE to begin taking title of spent nuclear fuel for disposal by January 1998. Owners of spent fuel routinely sue the federal government for the continued cost of managing the fuel. The recovered costs are paid out from the Treasury Department’s Judgement Fund and not from the DOE.

According to the audit, conducted by the independent public accounting firm of KPMG, the liability estimate “reflects a range of possible scenarios” regarding the operating life of the current fleet of nuclear power reactors. The estimate is also based on when the DOE thinks it may begin taking spent fuel. In May, the DOE received initial approval (Critical Decision-0) for a consolidated interim storage facility for spent fuel that, if constructed, would be operational by 2046.

The Department of Energy Nuclear Waste Fund’s Fiscal Year 2024 Financial Statement Audit was released by the DOE Office of Inspector General on November 14.

The fund: The NWF, which was intended to finance the DOE’s disposal of spent fuel, had a balance of $52.2 billion as of September, according to the KPMG audit.

The NWF was funded through annual fees—initially, $0.001 for every kilowatt hour provided by a nuclear power plant—levied by the DOE on owners and generators of spent fuel. The DOE stopped collecting annual NWF fees, however, in 2014 following an order by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which found that the DOE failed to justify the continued imposition of the fee following the suspension of the Yucca Mountain repository project.

U.S. spent fuel liability jumps to $44.5 billion

www.ans.org www.ans.org
 


“… The gathering of about 35 people included a who’s who of faith-based groups including World Relief, Samaritan’s Purse, Christian Aid, Food for the Hungry, Compassion International, and National Association of Evangelicals. It also included the Muslim charity Islamic Relief.

The U.S. officials, led by USAID deputy administrator Pete Marocco, said they could not explain the rationale behind the terminations of any given program but insisted the cuts had been a success.

“Some of us looked at each other in disbelief,” said an attendee.

“We care about poor and hungry people and don’t know how you can claim this as successful.”

… Inside the room, Marocco told lawmakers USAID was a “money-laundering scheme” that had lost its way and said he was examining whether foreign assistance was even constitutional, according to two congressional aides present in the meeting. He said he was considering making “multiple” criminal referrals to the Justice Department for alleged and unspecified crimes.

… The effects of the cuts on Christian aid groups, which receive millions of dollars from the U.S. government every year, have been stark. Catholic Relief Services anticipates layoffs and reductions to programs of up to 50 percent, according to a February report in the National Catholic Reporter. The same month, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops laid off 50 staffers in its migration and refugee services office, attributing it to a delay in reimbursements from the government.

… The Supreme Court provided some hope to aid groups on Friday in a 5-4 ruling clearing the way for the Trump administration to restart nearly $2 billion in payments for aid work already done. But Marocco made clear in his meeting with lawmakers that the U.S. government should get out of the philanthropy business, raising expectations for future showdowns at the Supreme Court.

… While Marocco took heated criticism from Democrats during Wednesday’s meeting, many of the leaders of faith-based groups praised the intent of the Trump administration’s changes, particularly Ken Isaacs, vice president at Samaritan’s Purse, according to two people in the meeting. …”
 
DiehardHeelFan said:
Wasn’t sure where to put this.

www.cbsnews.com

Social Security says it will restart clawing back 100% of overpayments to beneficiaries

The Social Security Administration said it will restart a policy that had caused financial distress for some beneficiaries.
www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com
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Thanks — from the link:

“… Because of public backlash over the 100% recovery policy, the agency last year had capped the withholding rate for someone who had been overpaid at 10% of the person's monthly benefit. On Friday, the SSA said it will start claiming 100% of benefit checks to cover new cases of overpayments, while the withholding rate for people with overpayments before March 27 will remain at 10%, as will the rate for overpayments for Supplemental Security Income, a program for low-income seniors and disabled Americans.

"People who are overpaid after March 27 will automatically be placed in full recovery at a rate of 100% of the Social Security payment," the agency said.

The 100% clawback policy had sparked an outcry after instances in which beneficiaries were hit with surprise bills that demanded repayment within 30 days. In some cases, the bills were for tens of thousands of dollars.

If beneficiaries were unable to immediately pay the bill, the agency could dock their entire monthly Social Security payment, leaving some people financially destitute, as reported by "60 Minutes," KFF Health News and other media outlets,

In many cases, the overpayments were the fault of SSA. A 2022 report by the agency's inspector general found that about 73,000 overpayments that year were due to a lack of "effective controls over benefit-computation accuracy."
… Raising the clawback rate to 100% from its current 10% will increase the amount of recovered funds by $7 billion over the next decade, the agency said. SSA pays out about $1.6 trillion in benefits each year. …”

——
The policy change was because the bar outweighed the return — $7 billion over 10 years ain’t nothing BUT as a fraction of the $16 Trillion being paid out over those same ten years, the decision was that slower clawbacks that don’t leave tens of thousands of recipients (many of whom were not to blame for the overpayments arising from an SSA error) destitute was a more humane plan.

The real key should be fixing the process that results in the mistaken calculations (which is at a very low percentage of the total served but still should be improved — and that includes for people being underpaid due to such errors, as well) — but firing up to half the staff and closing SSA offices seems very unlikely to help that.
 
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