If you think .1% of the debt is all that is illegitimate I would disagree but I understand your sentiment.  I would also point out this was just from the CARES act and it only touches on unemployment fraud.  It doesn't cover any other fraud Here is a list of some of the stuff the DOJ knows about and is going after, but what don't they know about, how much of that will be recovered? How many of these mistakes are we getting ready to repeat because our politicians are rubbish at working together to intelligently help their constituents?

I'm just frustrated with many aspects of our government.  How so many people are dancing like good little D or R puppets for their "side" when the puppet masters (wealthy companies and individuals) are the ones pulling the strings and our representatives get rich in the process of ultimately maintaining the status quo.    

Have you generally not been paying attention the past 20 years or so? I'm not generalizing, I'm coming to a conclusion based on tonnes of data. 

Remember, 70 million people voted for Trump in this last election. That means at least 70 million people either found his blatant bigotry and shitty behaviour endearing, or at least it wasn't a dealbreaker. That is a huge, nationwide problem. This isn't something quaint like voting for Bush, it's Trump. His nonsense is so widespread, varied, and blatantly obvious that I genuinely wouldn't even know where to start. and people voted for him. Either because they liked the shitty, bigoted things he said, or cared so little about the people he was shitty to that his behaviour wasn't enough to get them to realize 'holy hell this isn't worth it'. 

To some people, it's worth it to vote for someone like Trump, and that's a MAJOR problem. they ARE the villains. 

You republicans may not be the bad guys, but you still voted for the bad guy, and that's enough. 

Well what specifically would you like to do to fix the issue? Usually when I hear these kinds of concerns it leads to "well let's just help people less" which I don't agree with. In my opinion the fix would be to boost employment of social workers so that they aren't as swamped and they can catch people more often who are applying for these things illegitimately. Similar to how my fix for revenue is to put more money into the IRS to catch those who are cheating their taxes. If you have a solution that doesn't hurt those who need this aid I'm happy to hear it. 

So you think pushing this through under budget reconciliation was the only means to get this done?

So who is going to pay this back? Future generations seems most likely to me, so "think of the children" is very apt at least if you are looking long term.  Can you look long term?

Do you not agree that this is a band-aid?  How does this fix long term poverty?

If you think .1% of the debt is all that is illegitimate I would disagree but I understand your sentiment.  I would also point out this was just from the CARES act and it only touches on unemployment fraud.  It doesn't cover any other fraud Here is a list of some of the stuff the DOJ knows about and is going after, but what don't they know about, how much of that will be recovered? How many of these mistakes are we getting ready to repeat because our politicians are rubbish at working together to intelligently help their constituents?

I'm just frustrated with many aspects of our government.  How so many people are dancing like good little D or R puppets for their "side" when the puppet masters (wealthy companies and individuals) are the ones pulling the strings and our representatives get rich in the process of ultimately maintaining the status quo.    

I have a hard time understanding why anything should be held up because people find a way to fraud the system.  I mean its not like this is something new but something that has been happening since the formation of the US.  There is always a criminal element that fraud the system no matter what policy or effort that is put into place where money is concerned.  Government is a slow process and usually things do not get taken up until there is enough outcry from the citizens.  If anything, articles like the one you post would just be used to do absolutely nothing.  

It only seems like people care about plugging holes and waiting to fix stuff when money is distributed to regular people.  When money is distributed to the rich and wealthy or they are given just about every incentive possible to pay little to no taxes and game the system to their heart content, silence.  

Gaming the system will always be something people do no matter if they are rich or poor, criminal or not.  I rather we did something, help the people in need now, shore up the wholes when we find them, then wait until both Reps and Dems can come to an agreement.  Lets be honest, who has the patience for that kind of BS.  Just the last few decades alone shows that getting both sides to agree on anything together even when it benefits them both is like asking Ohio State fans to sit next to Michigan.

If put in simple terms I think of the government as my employee.   If I was sending an employee to the bank to make a deposit and found out only 90% of my business's money was making it to the bank I'm not going to say "Well there has always been crime, I probably should fire that guy or send someone else to make the deposits but at least some of the money is going where it should.  I'll do something about that 2 or 3 years from now ... seems like about the right time frame"  That seems ludicrous to me.

Some people care about waste / fraud all the time, why do you think the idea of smaller government is so appealing to more than just a couple people. 

While the idea of "shore up the wholes when we find them" seems reasonable, holes have been identified but money keeps getting dumped into the same loose system.  For many this is a frustrating scenario. 

If put in simple terms I think of the government as my employee.   If I was sending an employee to the bank to make a deposit and found out only 90% of my business's money was making it to the bank I'm not going to say "Well there has always been crime, I probably should fire that guy or send someone else to make the deposits but at least some of the money is going where it should.  I'll do something about that 2 or 3 years from now ... seems like about the right time frame"  That seems ludicrous to me.

Some people care about waste / fraud all the time, why do you think the idea of smaller government is so appealing to more than just a couple people. 

While the idea of "shore up the wholes when we find them" seems reasonable, holes have been identified but money keeps getting dumped into the same loose system.  For many this is a frustrating scenario. 

No, people only care about waste or fraud when its convenient.  Could you please prove this statement? Seems like a blanket statement one I don't agree with. I get that... People only raise an issue when they do not support any particular item but seem to be ok to ignore fraud and waste for things they do support. ...seems to reflect your attitude toward the particular fraud I brought up.   What I am saying is that no one moves to do anything when they are not the ones affected by waste or fraud but when it comes to politics people tend to put their blinders on depending on which side they happen to support. Your use of the word 'tend' makes this acceptable but what came before was rubbish that I would guess was born of your own frustration.

Lets take your analogy.  If you are a business owner and you are in a situation where you do not control the route to your customers.  As a business you would think about if I can get 90% of my goods to the customer and only lose 10% would you hold your business up until some time in the distant future someone will take care of the situation so you can get 100%.  If your customers need the goods today, next week or even next Month, how long are you willing to wait until the situation is fixed. Personally I would change carriers, I am in the transportation business and 10%+ loss is not acceptable.  If you suggest that the transportation of goods is outside of your control then I would change to a different model that puts it in my control.

The point is that there is so much waste and fraud for anyone to get on a high horse but if you are only going to care when something happens you happen to not fully support then its more show then caring. I see this a lot, case in point would be the conversations about the debt. People were ok on the GOP side about the Debt and it wasn't that big of an issue when the current administration was raising it a Trillion a year but now the new administration is in power now its an issue again. I've heard people bitching before and after Clinton / Newt Gingrich & the GOP had a "balanced" budget all those years ago.  The true scope of the national debt (when you include social security) is staggering at over 100 trillion. If you're interested this is an ok read. They are more right-center but a pretty factual source.

With the current situation within our federal government, lets be honest, how long do you believe it would take to shore up anything with both parties can barely get anything done because each party is looking to score points then actually fix anything. I don't know, I just am not crazy about kicking the can down the road and burning money.  These are strange times though, the loss is just disheartening. Naw, Dems have a short window to get things done so they need to move while they have a chance.  Waiting for the GOP to actually look to meanfully come to the table to do something is wishful thinking especially if they are going to still prop up Trump as the party leader. If that's true then it seems weird that any relief packages got through before Dems had the power to "move while they had the chance" ....

I feel like we've discussed in this thread how bad metaphors make for bad arguments countless times, but lets look at this metaphor.

If you are insinuation that this is a bad analogy (I wasn't being poetic and using a metaphor),  you would have been better off arguing it was an oversimplification, and in many way it is. 

Here is where you start to make a real mess of things:

It doesn't really make sense to suggest that you are sending the employee to the bank to make a deposit, but instead it would be a withdrawal. The government is sending you money, you aren't sending money to the government in this scenario. As such, lets say that your employer went to the bank and made that withdrawal. When they got back, some of the money is missing. 

Where does the government get money? Answer taxes.  Who pays taxes? I do. 1) So here I made myself the employer.  So the first part of the analogy stands. 2) I've entrusted the "government" with money (i.e. my taxes) to make a deposit (i.e. dispense aid.)  Remember I'm the employer not the employee.  Can you follow that?

This leads to part two of what seems weird to me. You don't just fire the employee on the spot if they tell you that they were robbed (but still managed to keep most of the money). If you are working in a vast system like the entire country, robberies will happen. It is unfortunate but what is your solution? Find someone (in this case a reliable system) that will not lose / pocket 10%+ of the money on the way to the bank.  You are twisting the analogy to suit your argument though. You have made it a mess by (below and above) saying they are getting money from the bank, to what, pay their bills in cash?  You also make the employee out to be the victim when in the original analogy they are either incompetent or a thief.

What you seem to be suggesting is to stop moving money. Nice attempt to put words into my mouth. Did I say "stop making deposits" or did I say "I probably should fire that guy or send someone else to make the deposits".   I'll wait for you to read it again ... ok so I won't even address the next paragraph.

Now, remember, you are receiving funds. In the context of the metaphor, why does an employer receive funds? To pay their bills. Now lets consider in the context of the metaphor the employer says "Clearly there is a fault here, so lets stop moving money". The employer then fails to receive the money from the bank. As such, they are unable to pay their bills to maintain their business, so the business falls apart. They have no product to sell, expenses add up: Catastrophic failure.

On the other hand, if you keep receiving money, you are losing money, however in business the idea of inevitable loss is fairly common. ok I can agree with that much at least. If you own a book store, while you may try to avoid it, some product will be stolen. It doesn't make sense to close the store. You however accept the losses as a part of doing business while patching holes which seem feasible... correct, you patch the holes, you don't just sit on your hands for an extended period of time and do little to nothing to stem the loss.  You don't just say clearly there is fault here but lets not do anything meaningful to stop it, not yet.

Just, the deeper you go, the more of a mess this metaphor is. At the end of the day, it is not a good option to simply not provide the help that Americans need, so while I am sympathetic to the idea that "losing money is bad", the alternative is worse. Bad metaphors don't change that. The more you twist the ANALOGY the more it falls apart, yes.