Trump Admin dismantling Dept. of Education — mass firings underway

[nycfan]

The President's proposed budget is irrelevant, which I am sure you know. Congress just takes the prior year's budget and adds a small increase to each category. Maybe you'll get a small tweak here or there, but I am not sure anyone in Congress even reads the president's proposed budget.

I know, but for some reason the DoE spreadsheet reports it every year along with the actual appropriations…

 

[HintonJamesHeel]

100 is 25% increase from 80
100 is 20% more than 80

Exactly. So in this case, it increased 38%.

 

[ChapelHillSooner]

100 is 25% increase from 80
100 is 20% more than 80

I would say at best that second one is ambiguously worded.

 

[Patb78]

Mistakes have been made. That will happen when you come in with a chainsaw and not a scalpel. People that should not have been fired, have been fired and then rehired. The mistakes are being corrected, as far as I've seen. It's not ideal but at least it's something to get rid of waste.

I think the biggest issue, and you see this response from posters here, is that it seems like monopoly money. "$59 million to house illegals in NY? Who cares. $59 million is a drop in the bucket!" Then you add on the next unnecessary, and sometimes ridiculous, "$59 million" and then another and another and another and another and another and another... always under the same guise of "It's just a drop in the bucket".

Zen, I see what you are saying. However, the way Musk is going about it is not the way you eliminate fraud. About half of my career was in healthcare. I was the Finance Director for a company that provided services under Medicaid programs. While I can’t speak to fraud in defense, education and other departments, I can speak to fraud in healthcare. First off, fraud is not committed by an individual. That’s virtually impossible. Fraud is committed by healthcare providers. This can exist of companies that provide nursing home services and medical equipment. There are several services that Medicaid pays for. One certainly is nursing homes. Another is in home care. These are called CAP (Community Alternative Programs) services. CAP bring services to people in their home so they don’t have to enter an institution. When a person applies for assistance under a Medicaid program the first thing the agency that will provide the care does is work with Medicaid to see if the patient is eligible from a financial standpoint. If they are, then a plan of care is developed by the agency’s case manager. This plan most fall within the guidelines set by Medicaid. The plan of care is the key. That determines what services the patient is going to receive. The services provided under the plan of care determine what the agency can bill. Each service has a code. The code is how the agency bills Medicaid. If a service is provided that is outside the plan of care (an example would be too many hours) then Medicaid will not pay and the agency must eat the cost. The way fraud is committed is by false billing by an agency. They can charge for services and equipment not provided for by the plan of care. There was a company called the Scooter Store. They guaranteed they could get your grandmother a scooter thru Medicare or Medicaid. When I saw that I knew they were committing fraud. The scooter would have to be part of the plan of care to be covered. They were falsifing plans of care. The company I worked for was owned by what was at the time the largest nursing home contingent the country. They eventually lost both their Medicaid and Medicare licenses. Both the Scooter Store and the company I worked for lost their licenses because they committed fraud. The fraud was discovered, not by somebody who didn’t know what the fuck was going coming to Medicaid and Medicare and telling them to slash say $200B, but by government auditors. A healthcare company can commit fraud for awhile, but they will eventually be found out by auditors. If musk was really serious about reducing fraud in government health care agencies, he would hire more auditors. A strong auditing arm is the best and only way to find and prevent fraud in healthcare programs.

 

[mynameisbond]

Dismantling DOE is going to burden the poorer states who have to rely on federal funding to keep up their public school standards. The gap in educational quality between states with inadequate tax bases and those better able to self-fund will widen. Of course, that only matters if you actually care about education.

 

[Calheel]

The Federal Budget in 2019: An Infographic | Congressional Budget Office

The federal deficit in 2019 was $984 billion, equal to 4.6 percent of gross domestic product. Learn more about the deficit with a new interactive version of the infographic.

www.cbo.gov

The CBO doesn't include supplemental spending. The actual 2019 federal expenditures, including supplemental spending, was $5.47 trillion.

When discussing federal spending, it is very important that you compare apples to apples. If you compare apples to oranges, as you were doing, you come up with your 38% increase in spending.

Again, if you look at the graph in the treasury link I posted, you can see the exact increase in total federal expenditures by year.

 

[Calheel]

I would say at best that second one is ambiguously worded.

For sure.

80 is 20% less than 100. That is correct.

I have never heard anyone say that 100 is 20% more than 80. That is just weird.

 

[mpaer]

Dismantling DOE is going to burden the poorer states who have to rely on federal funding to keep up their public school standards. The gap in educational quality between states with inadequate tax bases and those better able to self-fund will widen. Of course, that only matters if you actually care about education.

Of course it is all totally Unclear But orangeturd hints at block grant type stuff to the States for "education"-as in maybe not eliminating the funding but not being as direct about how they must spend it
So I guess Texas could spend it on HS football stadiums and NC could spend it on Charter Schools-for example

 

[superrific]

Come on. There's a mathematical formula for determining how much more or less X is than Y. The whole exercise is simply one of definition, which means it's well suited to being governed by formula. Follow the formula and you know you're comparing apples to apples. Depart from the formula in favor of discretion leads to confusion.

 

[4thgenheel]

oops - why am i so bad at math! my bad @HintonJamesHeel

i was too quick to pull the trigger on you after all the posts earlier today in the ukraine thread about 20 billion being a significant portion of a trillion.

 

[wmheel1287]

How is it bait? I didn’t realize we have had such an increase. What is it onk

high. North Carolina spends $12k a student. $15k per student is insane.

The $12k includes the federal contribution. Any why do you believe that to be insane? That includes physical spaces, transportation, special education services, food programs, instructional staff, support staff, athletic activities, other social activities.

 

[altmin]

Dismantling DOE is going to burden the poorer states who have to rely on federal funding to keep up their public school standards. The gap in educational quality between states with inadequate tax bases and those better able to self-fund will widen. Of course, that only matters if you actually care about education.

During the 2021-22 school year, public schools in Louisiana received 19.5% of funding from the federal government.​

Share of public school district revenue coming from federal sources

In all, public schools in Louisiana received $2.3 billion, or $3,297 in federal funds per student. That’s 30% higher than the national average of $2,233 per student.

What percentage of public school funding in Louisiana comes from the federal government? | USAFacts

About 19.5% or one in every five dollars of public school funding, during the 2021–22 school year. As with most schools nationwide, Louisiana received more funding from local or state governments than it did from federal sources. The totals differ by district, depending on factors such as...

usafacts.org

 

[dcphx]

For sure.

80 is 20% less than 100. That is correct.

I have never heard anyone say that 100 is 20% more than 80. That is just weird.

I phrased it clunkily. My point was that you can show a change between two numbers as a different percentage. Both sides could be numerically correct.

 

[Zoo_View]

The $12k includes the federal contribution. Any why do you believe that to be insane? That includes physical spaces, transportation, special education services, food programs, instructional staff, support staff, athletic activities, other social activities.

Does it also include health care for teachers and staff? Retirement benefits?

 

[wmheel1287]

Does it also include health care for teachers and staff? Retirement benefits?

Yes...and it includes the local supplements. It's an average accomplished by taking every penny spent toward education across the entire state and dividing by the number of students serviced.

What it ignores is that if you removed the very large local spending done by counties like Wake, most counties would plummet to 8k or 9k per student. Furthermore, a HUGE chunk of that is spent on special needs children and their education. Many of those are at $100k or more per child because they have so many staff attending them.

 

[gtyellowjacket]

A big problem with what is going on is Musk and his minions don’t know jack shit about how our government functions. These cuts have been proposed in a time frame where there is no way they could have learned about the departments they are talking about gutting. They are assuming there is massive fraud in the spending of federal funds. Attacking SS by claiming large numbers of dead people are still receiving benefits (something that is impossible) and calling it a Ponzi scheme should set off alarm bells for everyone. The cuts they are proposing for Medicaid will have disastrous effects on the millions of poor people who rely on it for healthcare. By far most people in nursing homes are there because Medicaid pays for them to be there. Drastically reducing the federal part of Medicaid funding will mean a lot of people will lose nursing home care. This will undoubtedly lead to the closure of many nursing homes. Medicare will only pay for a 90 day stay in a nursing home and that is with a qualifying event (stroke, fall, etc) where the patient receives therapy. After the 90 days is up and the patient still needs further time in the facility they have to pay their own way or, if they qualify, they can move to Medicaid which provides open ended care. If what they are planning comes to fruition, then a lot of poor people are going to suffer. Hell, probably a lot of us will so they can give tax cuts to the wealthy.

Regarding the Social Security fraud, he did talk about that in a Joe Rogan interview. Rogan asked him directly if dead people were receiving Social Security benefits and Musk said he didn't think so. He said where the fraud is occurring is that other Federal departments use the Social Security database to determine if someone is alive or not. Since just about everybody has Social Security, I'm sure that was an expedient way to determine that. So the fraud occurs when a different department or agency looks at the social security database and says yes, this person is still alive, and should be getting whatever benefit.

Musk also pointed out that it may be fraud or it may be waste or a bit of both. Say a large nursing home business is getting a check for a deceased resident. They haven't requested that payment but they also haven't confirmed that the resident is alive or gone out of their way to tell the government they shouldn't be getting the check. Is that fraud or waste or a bit of both?

 

[mpaer]

Yes...and it includes the local supplements. It's an average accomplished by taking every penny spent toward education across the entire state and dividing by the number of students serviced.

What it ignores is that if you removed the very large local spending done by counties like Wake, most counties would plummet to 8k or 9k per student. Furthermore, a HUGE chunk of that is spent on special needs children and their education. Many of those are at $100k or more per child because they have so many staff attending them.

Great point
The State spends shit The State pays teachers shit. All their pitiful "but not 50th, so we are okay " standings/rankings only exist because of local tax supplements Chapel Hill Carrboro is over 50% Not state for example in their total spending
I don't know how the "leandro counties" make it

 

[Bigs23]

$2536 per student sounds insane.

Insanely low? That’s not that much.

 

[StrangePackage]

Regarding the Social Security fraud, he did talk about that in a Joe Rogan interview. Rogan asked him directly if dead people were receiving Social Security benefits and Musk said he didn't think so. He said where the fraud is occurring is that other Federal departments use the Social Security database to determine if someone is alive or not. Since just about everybody has Social Security, I'm sure that was an expedient way to determine that. So the fraud occurs when a different department or agency looks at the social security database and says yes, this person is still alive, and should be getting whatever benefit.

Musk also pointed out that it may be fraud or it may be waste or a bit of both. Say a large nursing home business is getting a check for a deceased resident. They haven't requested that payment but they also haven't confirmed that the resident is alive or gone out of their way to tell the government they shouldn't be getting the check. Is that fraud or waste or a bit of both?

This is such incredibly stupid bad faith that it makes me nearly speechless.

If only there were some platform that Elon had access to that would allow him to explain his behavior ... Or why he thinks cutting jobs and contracts from these regulatory agencies is a better means to address downstream fraud ... Or had literally any evidence for any fucking thing he's claimed about waste and fraud ...

That the man has unprecedented and likely unlawful access to literally every scrap of government data and is still using hypotheticals to justify his actions should tell anyone with even two synapses to spark that he's full of shit.

 

[gtyellowjacket]

This is such incredibly stupid bad faith that it makes me nearly speechless.

If only there were some platform that Elon had access to that would allow him to explain his behavior ... Or why he thinks cutting jobs and contracts from these regulatory agencies is a better means to address downstream fraud ... Or had literally any evidence for any fucking thing he's claimed about waste and fraud ...

That the man has unprecedented and likely unlawful access to literally every scrap of government data and is still using hypotheticals to justify his actions should tell anyone with even two synapses to spark that he's full of shit.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by bad faith but I'll try to interpret. I honestly think that going on an interview style program where the interviewer can ask questions to challenge Musk is a bit more helpful to understand his actions and more difficult for Musk than just tweeting.

And I really don't think Musk is speaking in hypotheticals as much as he's generalizing the scope of some of the problems. He's also put up his wall of receipts of real cuts he's making for people to examine and criticize. This is in contrast to someone like Trump who just says there's fraud and waste and we're going to get rid of it.