No one will go to jail and nothing will happen.
Discussion
It's not fraud, lts all legally approved funding by Congress and presidents. Waste, sure. Fraud? No
The funding itself is "legal" but if anyone cares to look deeper there are hundreds of crimes in just USAID alone. But I don't expect anyone to go to jail, I am happy just to see it all burned to the ground.
Would an IRS audit of a private company’s/individual’s books call money earmarked as thing A but really a payoff for thing B fraud? All those roads to nowhere in Afghanistan, were they bad investments or bribes to local honchos to get them on the US side or at least to not fight the US? I’d call that fraud once the attempt is made to hide what taxpayer money was actually used for. Legal use of the money or not.
False premise. Congress allocates a million for usaid grants for foreign relations and economic stability in areas, not individual projects. If Congress doesn't feel they met that mission, they could have not funded it anytime over the past 60 years.
They didn't.
I meant billion, not million.
Not a false premise if they would bust a private citizen for faulty records keeping. Say on the record what the money is for. All that congress letting it continue means is that either they are in on the fraud or don’t care.
It is though. Congress appropriated money to USAID they is designated for things like 'cultural improvement in Yemen'. Or any other of the hundreds program designated. With this budget, the agency directors, managers and staffers make the decision as to how to spend those monies. Perhaps they think sex changes are the way, or basket weaving classes, or giving rebels guns.
My company and/or job makes money, it gives me a check. The IRS has no say on how that money is spent by my family. Now, if I got a govt grant that was for A, and spent on B, that's different.
Right now, we have the word of an Billionaire Autist. Nothing more. USASoending has been a thing for a decade to track things like this, why is it only now they are 'outraged'? Odd.
It’s fraud. Just like the book deals politicians get after they get out of office are bribes. Even if the people that are paying the bribe have to buy every copy of the book and put them in a warehouse somewhere or burn them. I’ll take your point about congress and say if Congress allocated money for the purposes of bribing someone overseas under the pretense of using it for something else that just means they’re in on the fraud.
I don't understand what's fraudulent about it? By definition, it cannot be fraud. The constitution does not dictate or spell out in any way what kinds of spending Congress can make.
So how is it fraud? It's all out in the open. Go read the last omnibus bill. Read through usapending.gov.
Congress allowing and allocating/giving the ok for the Pentagon to buy 20k toilets doesn't make it fraud.
The allocations and spending is absolutely insane. No question and I hope it ends. But I don't see how it can be fraud.
It’s fraud if the stated allocation is a cover up for something else. Or even just overpaying on line item A because funding for line item B from the same company is approved at a level lower than the people buying line item B were hoping for.
Kind of like the idea that care for veterans especially veterans wounded in war isn’t counted as defense spending.
Wasting your breath, people will excuse the type similar to what they would use or are benefiting from elsewhere or wish to use in future...
Article 1 section 9 clause 7 of the US Constitution. Lying about what the money is used for in the books is defrauding the taxpayers.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-9/
Any logic leaning on the nature of its legality is just turtles all the way down.
The laws were corrupted a long time ago.
That's not a thing. The US constitution does not limit the spending type or items in any way. If Congress wants to spend money on balloon animals in the shape of a dick, and the president signs it, it's lawful. Wasteful? Absolutely. But not illicit or fraudulent at all.
Both parties signed off on this crap