Even though it wasn’t started under Barack Obama, the Lifeline Program — colloquially known as the “Obamaphone” — became a symbol of the expanding entitlement state under the previous administration.

Now, a report from the Government Accountability Office reveals largesse and fraud under the Lifeline Program is even worse than its conservative critics imagined.

According to the Washington Times, the report — conducted at the behest of Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat desperately trying to establish moderate credentials before her re-election bid next year — revealed over one-third of those enrolled in the program likely aren’t qualified.
“Some 10.6 million people have an Obamaphone, but 36 percent of them may not qualify, investigators said after sampling the population and finding a huge chunk of people couldn’t prove they were eligible,” the Times reported.

“More than 5,500 people were found to be enrolled for two phones, while the program was paying for nearly 6,400 phones for persons the government has listed as having died.”

That’s hardly surprising, considering the dearly departed have always been a key liberal demographic. However, the living proved just as able to get around the system as the inert and embalmed.
According to The Daily Caller, the GAO sent 19 investigators undercover to apply for Obamaphones using easily detectable fraudulent pretenses. In those cases, “we were approved to receive Lifeline services by 12 of the 19 Lifeline providers using fictitious eligibility documentation.”

Part of the problem is that there aren’t efficient checks to see if someone is eligible. To qualify for an Obamaphone, one needs to be on certain forms of government assistance, like SSI disability or food stamps.

However, the Federal Communications Commission left the task of screening applicants to the phone vendors, who profit off the program. Furthermore, they didn’t check through intergovernmental databases whether those who claimed they were on SSI on their Obamaphone application actually were.

In Georgia, an estimated 79 percent of those who claimed they were on SSI to receive a phone weren’t, and estimates for the United States at large are as high as 65 percent.
This massive fraud is beyond shameful, and the sad thing is that it was easily preventable. According to The Daily Caller, the GAO report noted “that after basic eligibility checks were instituted, the cellphones-for-the-poor program shrunk by a third, from $2.2 billion to $1.5 billion.

“In the 30 days following the addition of meager but previously absent anti-fraud measures, monthly payments dropped $40 million,” the outlet added.

There were other gems in the report (I was particularly impressed with the part where the program has $9 billion in funds stored away in private banks as opposed to in the Federal Treasury where it belongs), but the clear message is that a deliberate lack of oversight has facilitated kudzu-like growth of the Obamaphone program through willfully-ignored fraud.

If the program can’t be quashed — and I’m sure we’ll see some pusillanimity about going in that direction when Democrats start to cavil about the “fundamental meanness” of such a move — the least the administration and Congress can do is establish strict oversight. American taxpayers deserve better than to have their money squandered by politicians who find it politically inexpedient to prevent fraud.

H/T Milo

Please like and share on Facebook and Twitter with your thoughts on this Obamaphone fraud.

One of the biggest problems Americans face today is elitists who live in bubbles.

Whether they are multi-millionaire actors named Johnny Depp or left-leaning “journalists” at CNN, elitists live in a closed-off world where they believe that their struggles are more important than yours, and their minority opinions are actually shared by everyone.

One of those Hollywood elitists got a nasty surprise after she provoked the wrong Green Beret.
Actress Gwyneth Paltrow once compared reading mean tweets on the internet to facing combat as a soldier, but was quickly put in her place.

While the exchange is a few years old, the response from U.S. Special Forces veteran and Purple Heart recipient Bryan Sikes is a classic, and is a timely reminder that just because elitists shriek the loudest, they do not speak for true Americans.

To Miss Paltrow,

I’d first like to start out by saying how terrible I feel for you and all your friends that on a daily basis have to endure mean words written by people you don’t know. I can only imagine the difficulty of waking up in a 12,000 square foot Hollywood home and having your assistant retrieve your iPhone, only to see that the battery is low and someone on twitter (the social media concept that you and all of your friends contribute to on an hourly basis to feed your ego and narcissistic ways), has written a mean word or 2 about you. You’ve hit the nail on the head, war is exactly like that. You should receive a medal for the burden you have carried on your shoulders due to these meanies on social media.

You said, “Its almost like, how in war, you go through this bloody dehumanizing thing and then something is defined out of it.” I could see how you, and others like you in “the biz”, could be so insecure and mentally weak that you could pair the difficulty of your life on twitter to my brothers who have had their limbs ripped off and seen their friends shot, blown up, burned and disfigured, or wake up every morning in pain – while just starting the day is a challenge. How about our wives? The ones that sign on to be there for us through thick and thin, that help us to shake the hardships of war upon our return? And do all this while being mothers to our kids, keeping bills in order because we are always gone, and keeping our lives glued together. They do all this, by the way, without a team of accountants, nanny’s, personal assistants, and life coaches. Yeah, reading a mean tweet is just like all that.

You know what is really “dehumanizing”, Miss Paltrow? The fact that you’d even consider that your life as an “A-list” celebrity reading internet comments could even compare to war and what is endured on the battlefield. You and the other “A-listers” that think like you are laughable. You all have actually convinced yourselves that you in some way face difficulty on a regular basis. Let me be the first to burst your bubble: a long line at Starbucks, your driver being 3 minutes late, a scuff mark on your $1200 shoes and a mean tweet do not constitute difficulty in the eyes of a soldier.

Understand me when I say this: war does not define me. It is a chapter in my life that helped shaped me. Being a husband and father is what defines me. Remember, sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never…be close to what war is.
Even a few years later, the left has apparently still not learned that lesson.

As liberals lose their collective minds over Donald Trump pushing back on Twitter and act as if a humorous video of the CNN logo being tackled is hate speech, it’s important to take a step back and remember what true adversity is.
A soldier deployed in a war zone deserves our respect; a spoiled coastal elitist does not.

As Independence Day approaches, let’s give our attention and gratitude to true heroes who fight for American ideals, and leave the chattering classes in their small, isolated bubble.

H/T Independent Journal Review / Clash Daily