DannyZuco

You have to remember that Texas is an OPEN PRIMARY state....therefore, you can pick each year what primary you are wanting to vote in. I am betting that a LOT of real democrats voted in the GOP primary....I know I switch it up based on who is running for certain offices and who can get beat the easiest........I'll voted in the GOP primary this year because of the impending state representative race.....I DO NOT want one candidate in office because he is a shyster lawyer and loves him some CHINA businesses.......

There are better stories in a children's library......

Biden Admin's New Term for Migrants Sparks Republican Fury These people are NOT NEWCOMERS, they are CRIMINALS, EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THIS COUNTRY ILLEGALLY IS A CRIMINAL....There are NO OTHER WORDS TO IDENTIFY THEM AT ALL...... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-admin-s-new-term-for-migrants-sparks-republican-fury/ar-BB1j81Id?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=c22887ce7a5d41228c6a9531cd14fa6d&ei=16

Again, as asked the other day.....what is a conservative....since NO ONE seems to know.....but a politician is NOT conservative as they all are looking out of only one person....their re-election for more money.

Maybe on the first one is some districts, but you have SQUAT on the second one....MORAL.....That alone is joke when you think the government is in control of the money......There are NO MORALS in Texas Government. Only political parties that want you to believe they are doing what's best for you......

Sounds like words you should start living by.

You have NO evidence other than what some politician has told you....and You think I'm dense.....SMH

And yet on another thread you are "loving" a post about libertarians. So do you know the difference between Libertian, Conservative, Liberal, and Anarchist? Asking for a friend..........

Anarchist!!!!!

You think that taking Tax Payer Surplus Money is a good thing, because you get a little in your pocket, while the government will control what you get. A voucher plan DOES NOT WORK!!!!! IT has never worked and all you want is to say you get some money in your pocket. And then you treat teachers and other education workers like they are TERRIBLE people. And yet you live with one, and think that she makes more than she deserves. WOW!!!!! I don't have to worry about moving my family. Both of my daughters graduated from PUBLIC SCHOOLS and 1 has GRADUATED from a PUBLIC UNIVERSITY and the other is on a FULL RIDE SCHOLARSHIP!!!!! And in 4-5 years she will be a Doctor of Physical Therapy so that she can help kids.... A voucher system is a waste of TAXPAYER FUNDS, but keep believing it will give you more choice, when YOU ALREADY HAVE SCHOOL CHOICE.......Your taxpayer surplus will allow the government to control your lives even more. Taxation never ends, Government control of money never ends....especially in Texas.....it's like a

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/wendy-s-now-says-it-won-t-surge-price-menu-items/ar-BB1iYOLN?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=eab5cfc2d4164fd5ab989d46a777bd11&ei=90

You guys need to read more about all that money he supposedly saved us.....That comes from the increase in the "homestead" exemption that got passed, up to $100K I believe......but it is NOT working out the way he planned, as EVERY county appraiser has been increasing the cost enough to get to the 10% increase for every home owner. So while, he claims cuts, it only raised the county home value to make sure that everyone continued to pay......but keep thinking he's doing it for the people.....SMH.

The billion-dollar health scam the federal government won’t stop For 12 years, a Department of Transportation employee fraudulently enrolled his sister and niece on his federal health benefits plan. He claimed the two were his wife and stepchild. An equipment repair worker at an Army facility in Alabama kept an ex-wife covered for 14 years, and was caught only when he tried to add his new wife. And at the Department of Justice, an employee added a friend and her friend’s four children, asserting they were her family members. These are a few of what federal officials believe to be thousands of health insurance enrollment scams that cost the federal government as much as $3 billion every year. And it’s surprisingly easy to do. The Office of Personnel Management, which oversees health insurance for 8 million federal workers and their families at a cost of more than $60 billion a year, has never checked the eligibility of those on its rolls, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office, which has been pushing OPM for years to improve its oversight. And that failure is costing taxpayers billions and raising premiums for millions of civil servants. That’s Despite prodding from the GAO, the agency has no plans to conduct an audit because it said it would be too expensive. The agency relies on more than 160 government employing offices and more than 70 contracts with health insurance carriers to enroll and verify the eligibility of Federal Employees Health Benefits Program members.unacceptable, said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who plans to introduce a bill in March to require OPM to audit its members. “OPM does not care about fraud, or they would do it. It's not that hard,” said Scott, who requested the GAO report. “Companies do it all the time, and states do it all the time. It's real simple to put a program in place to do it, so if you don't do it, that means you support fraud.” A spokesperson for OPM balked at claims that fraud is not a high priority, telling POLITICO the agency “takes the integrity of the [Federal Employees Health Benefits] Program very seriously and is working diligently with agencies to address improper enrollments within the constraints of our resources from Congress.” That means the $120 million audit would come out of OPM’s budget while the savings accrue to enrolling agencies, according to OPM. “It's not an easy problem to fix, there's no doubt about that,” said Assistant Inspector General for Audits Michael Esser, who oversees audits of all programs administered by OPM. “But it is potentially a very costly problem to not address.” Esser’s office estimates that ineligible enrollees cost the federal health program between $250 million and $3 billion a year — calling the lack of accounting for improper payments “a persistent top management challenge” at OPM. ‘OPM’s passivity’ While OPM might claim that addressing ineligibility is a priority, “they certainly don't act like it,” said Seto Bagdoyan, a director on GAO’s forensic audits and investigative service team who authored the 2022 report. Bagdoyan said congressional action might be the only way to force OPM to address the issue. “With what we found to be OPM’s passivity in its oversight role, we essentially concluded that program integrity and managing risk are not apparent priorities for OPM,” Bagdoyan said. Scott’s bill offers no new funding for OPM but would mandate it implement the GAO recommendations, including removing ineligible members from the program, assessing the likelihood and impact of fraud and documenting its assessment. The Florida senator is confident the bill will garner bipartisan support. “Unless they were going to go campaign that they like fraud, I can't imagine anybody would be against it,” he said. Scott, when he was governor of Florida, conducted an audit of the state health benefits plan, which found roughly 3 percent of enrollees were ineligible, resulting in more than $20 million a year in savings to the state. At least 25 states have conducted audits of their benefit programs, according to GAO. New Jersey saved taxpayers tens of millions of dollars after its 2019 audit led to more than 13,000 ineligible dependents being removed from the state health plan. In California, a multi-year project to verify member eligibility of the state Public Employees' Retirement System health plans resulted in 2.6 percent of dependents being removed in 2015, saving the state nearly $122 million during the years of the audit. And all 50 states have for the past year been reviewing the eligibility of every Medicaid recipient for the first time since the end of the Covid public health emergency, which so far has led to at least 17 million people losing coverage, according to a KFF tracker. OPM has no plans to conduct an audit, but a spokesperson said the agency has launched a new FEHB Master Enrollment Index — a list of all federal employees and family members enrolled in the program that the agency can use “to more easily identify ineligible enrollees for removal.” The spokesperson said the office is also “training agencies and providers on enrollment verification and deploying centralized enrollment for every new benefit program offered to federal employees since 2000.” OPM is developing a centralized enrollment system for the new Postal Service Health Benefits Program — a separate initiative within FEHB for postal employees — the spokesperson said. GAO, which performed its audit between May 2021 and December 2022, interviewed five government agencies and five of the program’s health insurance carriers, which reported not regularly identifying and removing ineligible family members. The employing offices and carriers might discover members are ineligible only when an employee makes a coverage change or when they are tipped off by an employee. That’s how one federal worker was caught in January 2017. A health insurance carrier noticed an enrollee submitted altered court documents to remove his ex-wife from their health plan when adding his new wife to the plan. The document showed he divorced his ex-wife in 2017 — when the divorce actually occurred in 1993. The government paid out more than $150,000 in claims on behalf of the ex-wife over 14 years of ineligible coverage. In another instance, the agency’s Office of Inspector General received a hotline tip alleging that a federal employee enrolled their child as a dependent incapable of self-support to keep the child enrolled in health coverage past their 26th birthday — despite the child allegedly being capable of self-support and not having a qualifying disability. The government paid more than $160,000 in improper payments, including claims from several drug rehabilitation centers. Through another hotline tip, OIG discovered that a former Federal Highway Administration division employee had claimed for 12 years that his sister and niece were his wife and step-child to get them coverage. The government spent more than $100,000 in premiums and reimbursements on behalf of the two ineligible members. The GAO report notes that OPM doesn’t have a precise estimate of how many ineligible members there are in the program. But based on audits of state health plans, the number could be in the thousands. There are varying estimates on how much ineligible enrollees cost the program. The GAO report estimates the cost to be $1 billion a year, but the number is based on information from OPM and gives “a very rough sense of the potential magnitude” of the fraud in the program, Bagdoyan said. The amount could be much higher, considering the tens of millions of dollars in savings states have realized when conducting audits of their health plans, he said. Since the federal employee health benefit program’s start in 1960, OPM had never required employing offices to review documentation that would verify family member eligibility for new hire, qualifying life event or open season enrollments. The agency updated its guidance in April 2021 to require the offices to verify family member eligibility for new hires and qualifying life events — but not during open enrollment. But the GAO report found that not all of the offices are following guidance from OPM on new enrollees, and that they don’t regularly monitor for eligibility of currently enrolled family members. The new guidance also didn’t address those who might be fraudulently enrolled in the program. And OPM doesn’t monitor whether employing offices and carriers are adhering to the agency’s guidance on eligibility checks. “It just feeds into this passivity of, ‘Well, you know, everybody else is responsible. We're not really responsible,’” Bagdoyan, the GAO report author, said. “That's what we get over the last several years that we've been working on this issue.” And controlling health costs — especially as workplace premiums jumped in 2023 — is something all employers should pay more attention to, said Chris Deacon, a former assistant director in the Division of Pensions and Benefits in New Jersey who helped oversee the state’s 2019 audit. OPM — as the manager of the largest self-funded health plan in the U.S. — has an opportunity to set an example for other large employers across the country instead of taking “a sit-back approach” and “letting the vendors and the contractors and the providers call the shots,” Deacon said. Instead, the agency is taking “a somewhat territorial” and “defensive attitude” to the findings of fraud, waste and abuse within the program, she added. “They're dealing with taxpayer dollars, and, arguably, that trust and that fiduciary obligation to spend that money wisely and prudently is even heightened than what employers have to do,” Deacon said. “So it's an opportunity missed that they are not playing a leading role in how to purchase health care more prudently and in a manner that benefits the plan and the plan members.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-billion-dollar-health-scam-the-federal-government-won-t-stop/ar-BB1j1Y6G?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=5c788e5165774b26a49c517389538aa4&ei=13

While the article does place problems for women in Texas....I have to say, that Texas is home to largest HAIRDOS in the Country....NOBODY BEATS TEXAS BIG HAIR!!!!!!

That's not stealing that is called "BREAKING THE LAW".... Which by the way, if want them changed, you have to go back to that "VOTING" thing to change them, unless you are a true anarchist or revolutionary......Just saying. And how do vouchers get the government out of education, when THEY ARE providing the funds for vouchers. It means they have MORE control over the money.......SMH

I've got so many points from Whataburger, I could eat there for a month without spending a dime...... And my wife has about the same amount of points from Chik-fil-a.

Only if it the only place on the highway that I have to stop at.....at one time loved the Chocolate Frosty.....but unless I buy fries, it does not taste as good. Their sea salt fries are pretty good dipped in a chocolate frosty......

Thank Goodness you went with a real American Hero.........

I'd like to know who is Stealing your money?

Again, I guess you JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND CIVIC DUTY.....Meaning your government teacher did you a disservice. In reality, as long as there are taxes and there is a government.....IT IS NOT YOUR MONEY, as much as we wish it were, it is not, and the government continues to want more. But if YOU ARE OKAY with GOVERNMENT CONTROLLING YOUR VOUCHERS....then by all means continue to vote for those idiots. SMH And your wife is a teacher, I thought, and you don't think she make enough......Ya'll must have a great relationship.....SMH

I really do, I just use my real name, not my "danny zuco" name. Tru Storie

I run for office every 4 years.....I haven't been elected to the Presidency yet, but I have gotten at least 1 vote in every presidential race since 2000, cause I was legally able to be president then.....

I am sure that @KirtFalcon and @RETIREDFAN1 heard the entire thing......

And allow them credit for a common sense approach.....I think NOT......Until we start electing people like myself to office, we can't help the public.

50% of the problem is money.....not being spent in the correct areas of need....... #1. Administrators are Way OVERPAID...... #2. Teachers are UNDERPAID..... #3. Parents are "bulldozers" meaning they are trying to remove ALL obstacles from their student having to do ANY type of work, or responsibility. #4. I have stated many times that school districts need to do better with their money and budgets. #5. The state of Texas is NOT fulfilling their obligations--Since the 1990s......Robin Hood Legislation has been found Unconstitutional several times. The state has not meet their obligations to the Teachers Retirement Fund. And the state has yet to come up with a "fair", as ordered by courts, way to fund education. And might I add that the Texas Supreme Court.....one of the most CONSERVATIVE courts in the country has said it is unconstitutional. So we need to start putting some of the blame on government.