[A Conservative Teacher] 70% of Taxpayer Money for Katrina Relief is Missing, Report Shows

[A Conservative Teacher]

From an ABC News story:

...A inspector general's report found that about $700 million awarded to help Hurricane Katrina victims fortify their homes from future floods is unaccounted for, which Congressional leaders say is a troubling sign of the need for tighter controls as Superstorm Sandy rebuilding efforts intensify this spring.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is pressing the state of Louisiana to recover the money given to homeowners to elevate their houses. But David Montoya, the inspector general of the agency, told ABC News that the likelihood of reclaiming the money was "slim, at best."

"We have $700 million that we can't account for and that certainly did not go to elevating homes and preventing future damage from storms," Montoya said in an interview in his office in Washington.

The cases of government waste and fraud have steadily piled up since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast in 2005. Federal prosecutors are pursuing criminal charges in New Orleans, including one instance last week in which a New Orleans woman pleaded guilty to making false statements after taking government grants and failing to fix her home.

The Louisiana Road Home program, which allocated $1 billion to elevate and repair homes to protect them from flooding and storms, was part of the $29 billion Hurricane Katrina relief effort approved at the time by Congress. The government investigation found that 70 percent of the money has not been accounted for. More than 24,000 homeowners who each accepted grants of $30,000 were unable to show they used the money to fix their houses.

"There is fault all the way around. Clearly the homeowner accepting up to $30,000 to elevate their home is at fault for not using the money that it was intended for," HUD's Montoya said. He added, "Clearly the state's at fault for not doing a better job of due diligence if you will for ensuring that these homes were being elevated."

The state of Louisiana acknowledges that hundreds of millions of dollars from the program have not been accounted for...

THIS IS WHAT THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT DOES. Do you all understand that? Because the national government is so removed from taxpayers and because the national government is run by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats protected by powerful labor unions, the national government is not a responsible steward of taxpayer money nor an efficient spender of it. Increasing national government spending and increasing the powers and responsibilities of the national government only leads to greater and greater and greater waste, fraud, abuse, misuse, malfeasance, and criminal corruption.

This is why it is so important to resist efforts to grant the national government more spending authority, more powers and responsibilities, and more revenues- because the greater good of society is promoted when you OPPOSE this nationalization of resources and powers and life, liberty, and property is better protected when you RESIST the federalization of our lives.

UPDATE: 700000 out of 1000000 is indeed 70%. This sort of incompetence is criminal. The Louisiana Road Home program is funded and run by the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development. The head of HUD, an Obama appointee, is Shaun Donovan. Contact information can be found at http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/contact. Also contact your Congressman and demand an investigation into the waste and abuse of taxpayer money over at HUD that this program demonstrates.

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Posted By A Conservative Teacher to A Conservative Teacher at 4/24/2013 01:00:00 AM