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FEMA said the COVID-19 funeral assistance program will be implemented starting in April and applications will be accepted at that time. They are currently working to establish a phone number where applications can be filed. To qualify, applicants must meet certain conditions.The death must have occurred in the United States, including the U.S. territories and the District of Columbia, and the death certificate must indicate that the death was attributed to COVID-19, FEMA said.The applicant must be a U.S. citizen, non-citizen national, or a qualified alien who incurred funeral expenses after January 20, 2020.According to FEMA, the individual who died...

The Senate hopes to revive Treasury’s $700 billion financial rescue plan Wednesday night by packaging it together with more than $100 billion in popular tax breaks as well as aid to rural schools important to House Republicans. To calm voters fearful of bank failures, the $100,000 cap on federal insurance for deposits would also be raised to $250,000—a concession backed by both parties but also aimed at community banks who can be helpful in building small town support for the larger bill. With each permutation, the bill has steadily grown in size. Treasury’s initial plan was about three pages long....

After increasing the national debt by more than $3.2 trillion over the previous six years, President Bush submitted a fiscal 2008 budget totaling $2.9 trillion, which represents a trillion-dollar-plus increase (56 percent) over the spending level ($1.86 trillion) he inherited from the 2001 budget. Mr. Bush's five-year budget blueprint would add nearly $600 billion to the national debt in 2008 alone and another $1.9 trillion over the next four years. To keep the debt from soaring even higher, the president had to rely on numerous delusional assumptions. These included the absurd notions that his global war on terror would cost...

Federal spending in fiscal year 2006 increased by a whopping 9 percent — the largest rise since 1990 — and has risen more than 40 percent since President Bush took office. The most recent rise far outpaces inflation — the Consumer Price Index is up only 1.3 percent in the past 12 months. "The greatest scandal in Washington, D.C., is runaway federal spending,” Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said after the midterm elections. In recent years, he points out, the GOP majority "voted to expand the federal government’s role in education, [added new] entitlements, and pursued spending policies that created deficits...

A rapist whose victims included "Top Gun" actress Kelly McGillis got taxpayer-funded Viagra for years, despite his fiendish history, it was revealed yesterday as he was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Serial sex predator Leroy Johnson was prescribed the erectile dysfunction pill by doctors at the Bronx-based Fordham-Tremont Community Mental Health Center from early 2003 to mid-2005, according to court records. The health center stopped doling out the little blue pills to Johnson only after new DNA tests linked him to a 1996 knife-point double rape - bringing his total number of rape victims to five. Center officials didn't...

Most Utahns feel a state law that allows undocumented students to pay in-state college tuition should be repealed, according to a new Salt Lake Tribune poll. Seventy-one percent of the 625 registered voters who were interviewed by telephone for the statewide poll this week said Utah should "repeal the current state law that offers the discounted resident college tuition rate to the children of undocumented immigrants." Ruth Bick, a 63-year-old Ogden resident, said Utahns should not have to pay taxes to subsidize a college education for undocumented students. The state's middle class already is burdened enough with big tax bills,...

Some examples of what federal homeland security grants purchased in Wisconsin during the past three years: -Sturgeon Bay Fire Department: $109.12 for four behind-the-neck earmuffs and $23.79 for ear plugs for a new rescue team trained in responding to building collapses, fire Chief Tim Herlache said. The earmuffs provide hearing protection for rescuers wearing hardhats when they are using loud equipment, such as jackhammers. The earmuffs were part of a grant equipping a new $210,000 rescue truck also purchased with the homeland security money. The team also got money for a small carpentry shop - including $3.90 for 10 carpenter...

State Senator Gill Cedillo, infamous for his effort to give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants has now wants to allow them to get grants provided to UC and CSU students and would make them eligible to receive the Community College Boar d of Governor’s Fee Waiver that would allow them to attend Community College in California for free. Read More...

June 15, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - A Houston hairdresser with a long rap sheet conned the feds into paying for his sex-change operation with Hurricane Katrina aid, it was revealed yesterday. In a shocking example of mismanagement and fraud in the widening FEMA fiasco, Michael James Green, 25, was charged with bilking the feds out of $36,000 meant for destitute hurricane victims. He claimed to have lived in 18 damaged addresses and used 18 different Social Security numbers, federal prosecutors said. But Green wasn't using the money for food and shelter: He used it to pay for a sex-change operation,...

WASHINGTON - As requests for emergency assistance poured in after Hurricane Katrina, one applicant listed as his address the Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans. FEMA promptly issued a check for $2,358 for rental assistance. That's just one of thousands of examples of alleged fraud and abuse described in a new report by the investigative arm of congress — abuse that cost taxpayers about $1 billion. One person applied for aid 13 times, using 13 bogus addresses, and received a total of $139,000. The report says FEMA didn't even try to verify the identity of people who applied for aid by...

A first in Northwest Indiana HISPANIC SERIES: Illegal immigrant sets sights on attending college through new program BY JERRY DAVICH jdavich@nwitimes.com 219.933.3376 This story ran on nwitimes.com on Monday, May 29, 2006 12:16 AM CDT Chapter two: Reaching for the dream HOBART I Frances Vega cried when she heard the news. On Nov. 23, the day before last Thanksgiving, she heard about Sen. Dick Lugar's formal introduction of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM, Act. The still pending measure would help young, undocumented immigrants in the United States earn legal status by obtaining an education and...

A $2.7 trillion budget plan pending before the House would raise the federal debt ceiling to nearly $10 trillion, less than two months after Congress last raised the federal government's borrowing limit. The provision -- buried on page 121 of the 151-page budget blueprint -- serves as a backdrop to congressional action this week. House leaders hope to try once again to pass a budget plan for fiscal 2007, a month after a revolt by House Republican moderates and Appropriations Committee members forced leaders to pull the plan. With passage of the budget, the House will have raised the federal...

THE PRESIDENT'S RENOVATION STRATEGY Renovation strategy? That's one word you could use. Today George Bush begins a series of speeches trying to turn more public support for the war on terror in general and the war in Iraq in particular. It's an effort to rebuild his approval numbers. We've seen this before. The public becomes restless, and George Bush launches a series of speeches about the war in Iraq. Today Bush will talk about the global war on terror at George Washington University. I'm still a supporter of the Iraqi war. I still believe that Saddam Hussein had to be...

Congress is considering another $20 billion in aid to hurricane-impacted zones. If 2005 hurricane relief were a separate category in the US budget, the only larger items would be defense, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The federal commitment in the aftermath of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma has now hit $88 billion, with at least another $20 billion under consideration in Congress. This has become the largest disaster relief effort the government has agreed to - more than the combined amount it spent for 9/11, the Florida hurricanes of 2004, the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and 1992's hurricane Andrew (in nominal dollars)....

March 2006 Are We Ready for the Next 9/11? The sorry state—and stunning waste—of homeland security spending. Veronique de Rugy What do gym memberships, the Fourteen Mile Bridge in Mobile, Alabama, and a promotional campaign for a child pornography tip-line have in common? Answer: They all were funded with your homeland security dollars. Since September 11, Congress has appropriated nearly $180 billion to protect Americans from terrorism. Total spending on homeland security in 2006 will be at least $50 billion—roughly $450 per American household. But far from making us more secure, the money is being allocated like so much...

The government squandered millions of dollars in Katrina disaster aid, including handing $2,000 debit cards to people who gave phony Social Security numbers and used the money for such items as a $450 tattoo, auditors said Monday. Federal money also paid for $375-a-day beachfront condos and 10,777 trailers that were stuck in mud and unusable. Overcharges, poor accounting and abuses will take "months or years" to rectify, the Government Accountability Office and the Homeland Security Department's inspector general concluded in preliminary reports on how billions of dollars in taxpayer money is being spent. The Federal Emergency Management Agency recognizes it...

Thousands of applicants for federal emergency relief money after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita used duplicate or invalid Social Security numbers or bogus addresses, suggesting that the $2.3 billion program was a victim of extensive fraud, a Congressional auditor will report Monday. The examination of the so-called Expedited Assistance program determined that the Federal Emergency Management Agency failed to take even the most basic steps to confirm the identifies of about 1.4 million people who sought expedited cash assistance, leaving the program vulnerable to the "significant fraud and abuse," the Government Accountability Office intends to report. The auditors did not try...

In the days after the release of President Bush's budget for fiscal 2007, liberal special interests and the Bush Administration will have something in common: both will claim that it outlines deep cuts in spending. Don't believe it. The budget for fiscal 2007 (which will be begin October 1) proposes aggregate federal spending that is 49% higher than in 2001 (the last Clinton budget). This rampant spending growth during the Bush years is the cause of our current large federal budget deficits (which had been vanquished in the late 1990s). The President's budget projects a deficit in 2007 of $354...

When congressional Republicans, a free-spending lot who have helped ratchet up federal spending to record levels, proposed slowing the rate of federal spending growth by a hair, congressional Democrats accused Republicans of wanting to starve the poor and recreate Dickensian England.That scenario, in a nutshell, explains the looming fiscal crisis at all levels of government. The debate is between those who want enormous government and those who want something even bigger than that. Hence, the Associated Press reported this week that "entitlement" spending is growing out of control. The word "entitlement" itself is a problem. Americans believe they are entitled...

$39M Katrina Gov't. Credit Charges Probed By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer 7 minutes ago Federal employees helping Katrina victims charged more than $39 million on government credit cards for disaster relief items. Congressional investigators want to make sure the taxpayers got a good deal. And a senator, citing past abuse, wants to know whether anyone used the cards for holiday shopping. Many of the goods, which included $60,639 for sleeping bags and $713 for four 27-inch televisions, were bought at retail rather than cheaper volume prices following the Aug. 29 storm, according to federal records. The spending also included...