In just three weeks of investigation, President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has uncovered staggering amounts of federal waste, abuse and potential fraud.
One of its most egregious findings was FEMA’s recent expenditure of $59 million to house migrants in New York City hotels.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg: Federal agencies under President Joe Biden funneled millions into nonprofits such as Make the Road NY, which actively shields illegal migrants from federal authorities.
This should infuriate every hard-working New Yorker: Your tax dollars are wasted on unaccountable spending while veterans, working families and small businesses are ignored.
New York City and state follow the same reckless blueprint — pouring billions into migrant services and other leftist priorities while our citizens receive scraps.
The city’s budget for the 2025 fiscal year includes $66.3 million for illegal immigrants’ legal services alone — including $12.3 million to Action NYC for free legal assistance, $35 million for other migrant legal help and $5.4 million for asylum-seeker legal translators.
Another $13.7 million has been designated to help migrants get state IDs.
Yet while the city throws millions at migrants, it cannot scrape together a fraction of that sum for local veterans.
City Council Finance Chair Justin Brannan ignored my calls to double funding for veterans’ services — until it suited his political career.
Then, amid his run for comptroller, he found a measly $540,000 for an existing veterans’ program.
This is how politics works here: Public officials don’t serve you, they serve their ambitions.
It’s not just illegal migrants getting massive funding.
Politically motivated nonprofits are raking in millions from city coffers while “influencing” the policies of the politicians who funded them in the first place.
The city is funneling at least $31 million this year into “alternatives to incarceration,” letting repeat offenders cycle back into communities with little accountability.
VOCAL-NY, another taxpayer-funded group, fights for lenient drug policies while sending a racist convicted sex offender to testify before the City Council.
While the city has allocated $1.2 million for “gun-violence prevention” and “crisis-management services” this year, that money often funds political activist groups that do little to curb crime — even as law-abiding gun owners are demonized and violence continues to rise.
It doesn’t end there: The city allocated $415 million for its Gun Violence Prevention Task Force last year — a body that has obviously not made residents any safer.
That nearly half-billion-dollar budget would have better served as kindling to help ease New Yorkers’ exorbitant heating bills.
The restorative-justice industry siphoned off more than $12 million under the guise of reducing school suspensions — but instead of maintaining discipline, these programs let serious misconduct go unpunished, hurting students who are in school to learn.
Elsewhere in its monstrous education budget, our city is spending $3.5 million for LGBTQI+ community services, $1.58 million for trans equity programs, and $700,000 for a program labeled “DEI in Tech” — social-justice initiatives that have nothing to do with educating our kids.
Wouldn’t these millions of dollars be better spent improving our failing schools and boosting abysmal student performance?
Instead, this corrupt government is forcing taxpayers to fund the political indoctrination of children.
Even the city’s public-health budget is being exploited for ideological programs.
The city is pouring $74 million into the Center for Health Equity to pursue DEI in health care — even as emergency medical services remain scandalously underfunded, leading to some of the worst response times in city history.
Why are we spending more on defending illegal migrants than on ensuring veterans and law-abiding citizens get the support they deserve?
And where’s the oversight ensuring these groups aren’t laundering taxpayer money for political influence?
DOGE has effectively exposed waste, fraud and abuse at the federal level.
In New York, we desperately need our own version of it, for both city and state — independent watchdogs to investigate reckless spending, root out corruption and hold agencies accountable.
But while sitting city Comptroller Brad Lander should be doing this work, he’s more focused on climbing the political ladder than on protecting taxpayer dollars.
As public funds continue being funneled into politically connected nonprofits and special interests with little oversight, a local DOGE could finally bring transparency and accountability to rampant financial mismanagement.
New Yorkers deserve real audits, as well as accountability and stiff consequences, for misuse of their taxpayer dollars.
To get it, the people in office must care more about you than about their careers, their donor friends and their special interests.
Council Member Robert Holden (D) represents District 30 in Queens.
