No one in America should be surprised to learn that there is fraud in the ObamaPhone program.
Pretty much everything Obama does is to either (1) destroy America or (2) pay back cronies.
As we learn from The Washington Examiner, the payback is happening.
The federal subsidy known as the “Obamaphone” or “Obamanet” program could be losing nearly $500 million to fraud annually, according to a top Republican on the Federal Communications Commission.
Commissioner Ajit Pai made the accusation Wednesday in letter to the Universal Service Administrative Company, referring to the FCC’s Universal Service Fund, which provides a monthly $9.95 subsidy for telecom service to low-income consumers.
The subsidy is limited to one per “independent economic household,” or IEH, but telecom companies have the ability to override that restriction if applicants check a box stating they represent a separate household, even if they have the same address.
If you live in the hood as I do, there are multiple curbside “stores” offering ObamaPhones. It’s not unusual for people getting ObamaPhones to have multiple phones, something that is not supposed to happen with the plan.
Though Obama didn’t start the program, as the SafeLink program has actually been offering cell phones to low-income households in some states since 2008. However, when Obama came into office, he saw the easy money available in this area.as payback for donations to his campaign, thus he changed the rules. Better put, he extended the rules under the guise of helping root out fraud in the program.
The Lifeline program have increased greatly with the move towards cellular telephone services, leading the FCC to approve a comprehensive overhaul of the program in January 2012 intended to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse.
Obama essentially removed barriers for only having a single phone in the household, since Liberals argued that there can be more than one “working” adult in a poor household, and the minutes one gets free don’t allow for multiple users. And there were other changes, like everybody now gets a smart phone. Obama’s changes expanded the phone to include internet usage, another perk to being poor, paid for by the taxpayers.
The net to Obama’s changes is the costs of administering has gone up. The overhaul was supposed to save taxpayers $200,000,000. Instead it’s costing an estimated $500,000,000 in fraud alone.
This is typical Liberal “fixes” for problems that don’t exist.
