All those entrepreneurial 11-year olds and 115-year olds: ain’t America great?
DOGE announced on Saturday night that the Small Business Administration had loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to small enterprises during the COVID pandemic. Sounds fine, right?
Except for the fact that the business owners in these cases were all 11 years old or younger …
Some mighty fancy lemonade stands – because that averages out to about $55K per child. And then there are the Cadillacs of walkers for the mega-old:
In 2020-2021, SBA granted 5,593 loans for $312M to borrowers whose only listed owner was 11 years old or younger at the time of the loan. While it is possible to have business arrangements where this is legal, that is highly unlikely for these 5,593 loans, as they all also used an SSN with the incorrect name.
@DOGE and @SBAgov are working together to solve this problem this week. …
In 2020-2021, @SBAgov issued 3,095 loans, including PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) and EIDL (Economic Injury Disaster Loan), for $333M to borrowers over 115 years old who were still marked as alive in the Social Security database.
And yet the Democrats seem to oppose looking into this. Go figure.
While we’re at it, I’ll mention that Rubio is preserving 1,000 of USAID’s projects and folding them into the State Department, while jettisoning the rest. However, in the article I just linked, Bonchie points this out:
As of now, the current continuing resolution, which is a copy-paste of the last one that didn’t cut spending, fully funds USAID at Biden-era levels. Until Congress stops those appropriations, the federal government is just moving money around. As things currently stand, taxpayers won’t realize the savings, and the inflationary aspects of the deficit spending remain.
Supposedly, it will be accomplished in the fall. Time will tell.
And more is coming out about the Biden administration’s payments for DEI:
The new study, conducted by the Functional Government Initiative and the Center for Renewing America, identified 460 programs across 24 government agencies in the Biden administration that diverted resources to DEI initiatives.
At least $1 trillion of taxpayer money was infused with DEI principles, the study states.
The study lays out DEI infusion across several federal agencies, including the Defense Department’s plan to “integrate environmental/economic justice tools” into training, FEMA’s need to “instill equity as a foundation of emergency management,” and the Labor Department’s push to “embed equity in a sustainable manner that recognizes the multiple and overlapping identities held by workers.”
The “nothing to cut” narrative has always depended on a 40,000 foot view of spending. The usual form is that 90% (or some such) is defense, Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the debt, so there’s nothing to cut, you’re just playing with pennies or at most dimes.
So they open up USAID and find out that 83% of it is money better spent on something else. They will find stuff like this everywhere they look.
The 2008 Federal outlay was not noted for being lean and mean, and it was $2.9 trillion. Okay, let’s correct for inflation: BLS CPI calculator says $4.4 trillion. Now let’s look at the US population: 343 million today vs 306 million then, a 12% increase, that gets us to $4.9 trillion, and would keep per capita spending about the same.
The actual 2025 outlays were $6.9 trillion. So, back of the envelope, there is somewhere $2 trillion in bullshit to cut. There’s probably a lot in defense, Medicare and maybe even some in Social Security, and definitely a good chunk in that 10%-ish that’s not those things, and of course reducing expenditures ALSO reduces interest on the debt because they keep rolling the debt, it’s not like one giant 30-year mortgage that’s being paid off.
Every household struggling with its finances can make the very same argument: the vast majority of my spending is on housing, utilities, health care, food, and interest on my debt, so there’s “nothing to cut”. It’s fallacious for the Federal government too.
Niketas,
“They will find stuff like this everywhere they look.”
Yup.
My guess is the 11 and 115 year olds are due to typos when people enter their birth years?
Regardless, it shows how lousy the government’s software is and how little attention their staff pays attention to applications for government money.
I want to say UNBELIEVABLE.
What is UNBELIEVABLE is that Democrat party hacktivists could believe this massive, evil fraud would not go unexposed and opposed and prosecuted.
This road to right our sinking Ship of State is long. Early innings, folks. Early game.
If you’re not with me here in fully expecting massive fraud, there is an ongoing fraud trial in the Twin Cities, exposing another gargantuan Biden grift
The program was to “feed the people” during Covid hard time. It resulted in a quarter billion dollars going to 20-some people, many immigrants, a portion or more sent abroad to places like Somalia. Basically, only nugatory sums actually went to “food”, a mere fig leaf for this scam. (Scott Johnson at Powerlineblog.com is sitting in on the trial, reporting daily.)
The end of the beginning will only arrive when there are no longer any such Biden-era revelations.
@Rufus T. Firefly:My guess is the 11 and 115 year olds are due to typos when people enter their birth years?
I’d suspect fake SSNs on the applications.
To be 11 in 2021 you’d have to have written in 2010 for their birthdate, what kind of typo is that? 2100? 2001? Neither is particularly likely ot be tied to a legitimate business owner. Even worse for a 2009 birthyear.
As for the 115-year old, his birthdate would have to be entered as 1905 or 1906. Well, you could get 1950 or 1960 from that.
But I would guess fake SSNs, because then it’s not obvious it’s a bogus birthdate until you look up the SSN which probably no one did.
Trump will have about 6 months of very good republican party support to get things done, subsequent to which the republicans – as they are wont to do – will begin breaking ranks and start complaining, if not outright opposing, some/many of Trump’s plans.
The republicans just can’t stop themselves from doing this; it’s in their genes (sort of like a house-broken beaver, living nowhere near water, building a “dam” in the hallway using dolls, shoes, toys, towels and other assorted household items).
As for the Dems, they will continue to claim Trump is Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mussolini all rolled into one, will vehemently oppose everything Trump, all the while proposing nothing of substance and spewing a constant litany of lies and
mis-characterizations about anything Trump.
They realize – the Dems that is, as did the dead socialists mentioned – that the constant repetition of negative messages and lies by their puppets in the MSM will begin to have its desired affect upon many Americans and eventually they will believe the demonkrat propaganda.
The dems do not need to change; they realize how malleable (or should I say gullible) people are and if given enough time, can be led to believe anything at all.
This will reduce Trump’s approval ratings and encourage – as if they needed encouragement – the dumbpublicans to break ranks.
Trump still has to overcome some federal court decisions which, at best, will delay Trump’s agenda, or worse, prevent implementation of some. Then again, I guess Trump can just fire enough govt employees so that there is no one left authorized in a given agency to actually spend the money.
That may do the trick.
By the way, when the Keystone Pipeline was blocked by Biden, I don’t recall the media interviewing any workers who lost their jobs. Instead, they were mocked and told to “learn how to code.”
And I don’t recall anyone in the MSM asking “whose in charge?” when President Rip Van Winkle, aka, joke bidet was sleeping thru his four years.
Trump cannot move fast enough.
“The dems do not need to change; they realize how malleable (or should I say gullible) people are and if given enough time, can be led to believe anything at all.” JohnTyler
Those tactics only work because they are allowed to tell just enough of the truth to mislead.
Government officials and mass media must be held to the standard of ‘the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ with serious personal consequence for serial violators.
The COVID-era programs were administered–in their earliest stages by the Trump administration–under instructions to move the money quickly and not worry too much about scrutinizing applications. Possibly that was a mistake, but there is always a tradeoff between auditing and getting something done, and if you are trying to maintain consumer purchasing power, it makes sense to err on the side of getting the money out the door.
I don’t notice the Elon Musks of the world, or the neoneocons for that matter, reactiing with joy when auditors demand more detail, completion of more forms, etc., before approving payments.
y81:
Who are these neoneocons of whom you speak? You are in this forum so I assume you are
speaking of yourself, as a fellow neoneocon. Or just blowing smoke, projecting what you would or did do?
On a recent PBS piece about USAID programs cut, one field person spoke of a reading program in which kids–I don’t recall which country–who couldn’t recognize a single letter in their alphabet were, in eight weeks, able to read and explain a story. Even if they’d meant eight months, it’s still a shame public schools don’t use that system (sarc).
There are, apparently, large stocks of food and medical supplies in warehouses which can’t move without USAID money. Apparently, the local authorities aren’t answering their phones.
Maybe Blackwater could take over the country for a couple of years until they get straight. Not sure who’d pay them, though…..
Bumping a comment of Art Deco’s from a previous thread:
https://thenewneo.com/open-thread-3-8-2025-2/#comment-2791777
“the optimal solution here: to shut down the SBA and sell off its loan portfolio. We have these institutions called ‘commercial banks’. We don’t benefit from a federal agency horning in on their business for a favored few.”
The ONLY reason why all this is coming out—that is, IF it’s in fact coming out—is that Trump won the election.
He wasn’t supposed to (just like 2016) and his latest win is also considered illegitimate by many of his opponents, who are at a loss as to how to hog-tie him and his administration just as they were able to do the first time he was president.
Hold on! Here’s an idea: Why don’t the Democrats just try to shut down the government FOREVER! (Or at least try….)
** “coming out” is a relative term: yes, it IS coming out” in certain responsible media organs but COVERED UP or MISREPRESENTED by practically ALL of the Corrupt Media, which means that huge swaths of people are told that Trump (and Musk) are beyond evil and trying to destroy both America and the West.
File under: In spite of Trump’s victory we’re STILL Through the Looking-Glass…
And in other Through-the-Looking-Glass news, here’s cutting-edge delusional Alejandro Mayorkas…
“Alejandro Mayorkas Denies Any Blame for Trump’s 2024 Win, Laments New Media Overcoming ‘Traditional’ News”—
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/03/10/ex-border-czar-mayorkas-rejects-blame-for-trumps-2024-win/
H/T Powerline blog.
As they say, a Piece of Work…
Barry Meislin @ 4:57 AM;
If there was any justice on this earth Mayorkas would be indicted as a co-conspirator for murder (as well all those who implemented the open borders policies)..
While everybody must be held accountable for their own actions, the policies of Mayorkas enabled illegal aliens to murder American citizens.
He is truly a disgusting , dishonest , lying POS.