Head Start Fraud

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Whenever you give government the power over your lives, they will always screw it up, and do whatever they can to gain even more power. Big government, or centralized government, cannot be trusted. Especially when it comes to our kids.

Head Start is government pre-school with the intention to provide child development services to lower income families, and begin the indoctrination process. The program is used by nearly a million children per year. Obama's stimulus program has provided, in addition to the $7 billion normally received, an additional $2.1 billion. However, the Government Accountability Office has been receiving allegations of fraud and abuse involving two Head Start nonprofit grantees in the Midwest and Texas.

One wonders how rampant this fraud is throughout the organization.

What is interesting about this is that the current administration, and Democrat Party allies, are constantly telling us that corporations can't be trusted, and that unsavory practices run rampant throughout the private sector. In reality, it is the government sector that is full of corruption.

In the cases mentioned, one grantee inappropriately counted time parents spent helping children with homework as contributions to meet program funding requirements. While not fraudulent, investigators found that at both grantees, the average number of students who attended class was significantly lower than the number of students the grantees reported as enrolled in class.

To test the allegations, the GAO tried to register fictitious children as part of 15 undercover test scenarios at centers in six states and the District of Columbia.

In 8 instances staff at these centers fraudulently misrepresented information, including disregarding part of a family's income to register over-income children into under-income slots. The undercover tests revealed that seven Head Start employees lied about applicants' employment status or misrepresented their earnings.

What does this mean? In order to get more funding the representatives of the Head Start program are lying. This is what happens when the federal government unconstitutionally funds programs that are not within their constitutional authority. Dishonesty and fraud is rampant throughout all government programs. It is only now that we are seeing it rear its ugly head in the Head Start program.

Granted, there were seven centers that did not manipulate information during the investigation.

The saddest part about this is as the Head Start facilities manipulates information to get more kids in, including children of families making more in income than the maximum designated level allowed, children that are supposed to get into the program are waiting on a waiting list.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Basic Head Start Facts - National Head Start Association

Undercover ops reveal fraud, abuse at Head Start program - Examiner