Government Waste Tracker:
- $22,600,000,000 (HHS) – Aiding illegal migrants through resettlementprograms, home and car purchases, and loans
- $7,500,000,000 (DOT) – Funding a few dozen electric vehicle stationsacross the nation
- $7,000,000,000 (EPA) – Funding green energy projects that reduce greenhouse gases and promoting the adoption of green alternatives nationwide
- $5,000,000,000 (EPA) - Funding green energy projects that reduce gas emissions and supporting green banks
- $2,000,000,000 (EPA) – Funding projects to decarbonize American housing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
- $382,000,000 (DOL) – Issuing fraudulent unemployment payments to tens of thousands of individuals, including those with birthdates in the future, infants, and people listed as 115 years old
- (clipped due to length)
The second item on the list is false, which makes me question the rest of the list.
$7.5 billion was not spent on "a few dozen electric vehicle stations." Instead, $7.5 billion was budgeted under the law and the money has been slowly spent -- only a few million went to funding those charging stations. From what I can tell, the "Big Beautiful Bill" has not cancelled those programs so the $7.5 billion is still on track to be spent. It is expected that it will build as many as 7,500 charging stations with at least four spots to charge vehicles in each station (though many stations have as many as 20 or 30).
As the article you posted mentioned, it was not expected this money would be spent quickly and that a lot of states did not have experience in building charging stations. Of course, with the lack of charging stations across the US prior to this bill passing (most done by either Tesla or Volkswagen (under its Electrify America brand that is part of the Dieselgate settlement), almost no one outside of EA and Tesla had experience; part of why it was expected that the money would be spent slowly.
The next two below that had descriptions that looked to be almost meaningless, without even enough information to identify what programs they are. The $2 billion project, from what I can appear to find, will improve projects in primarily poorer neighborhoods -- and it is a combination of public and private money, where through private money about $100 billion will be spent total. I'm sorry, if the government spending $2 billion creates $100 billion in money spent, that doesn't sound very wasteful to me. This is particularly since it appears the goal is to make these houses of poor people more energy efficient, reduce their CO2 output, improving the finances of those in the neighborhoods.
It appears something similar is going on with the $5 billion project, where it isn't quite as much private money but it is at least matching the money spent by the government. It does not appear to be "waste," other than maybe because it is against the agenda of oil companies.
I get the feeling that in 4 years we'll see a similar list of all the things the Trump administration "wasted" money on; despite many of the items being a list of differences in political priorities. Though, some will be legitimate, such as
Trump selling thousands of government owned EVs and charging stations, to replace them with gasoline vehicles that are more expensive to run, estimated to cost the government $1 billion. And that is before the requirement for
USPS to sell it's EV delivery vehicles, which is likely to cost another billion dollars.
