D.C.’s government youth jobs boondoggle
Every government jobs training program is a boondoggle. It’s inevitable. See my post here for a brief, waste-clogged history of federal and local jobs initiatives that use taxpayer funds to redistribute unemployment.
The latest example comes from our nation’s capital, where they are paying youth jobs enrollees to go to the City Council…to lobby for more money for their program.
On Monday, District residents’ tax dollars went to pay Summer Youth Employment Program participants to attend a Council oversight session at which they lobbied for more funding for the program.
It’s just the latest outrage surrounding one of D.C.’s best-intentioned and worst-run programs.
SYEP, which hires about 20,000 D.C. youth for various minimum wage summer jobs, was budgeted at $22.7 million. But it’s already $11.5 million over budget — an overrun of 50 percent.
D.C. Auditor Deborah Nichols said Monday that “the lack of fiscal discipline in the design and execution [of SYEP] is irresponsible, poses a threat to other vital District programs and the District’s fiscal stability in these austere economic circumstances.” She said this year’s cost overruns are nothing new — SYEP overspent by more than $56 million over the past two years.
According to NBC Washington’s PJ Orvetti, Mayor Adrian Fenty plundered the city’s welfare and homeless funds to shore up the program. And instead of killing it, he wants to extend it an extra week:
Councilmember Michael Brown, who heads the committee that oversees SYEP, told WTOP last month, “We have questioned from time to time what the motives are. Is the motive to just have as many people signed up as possible so you can say you gave X amount of people a job for summer? Or is the purpose to give young folks experience to the work environment?”
Fenty communications director Mafara Hobson has said, “All we’re trying to do is give kids an opportunity to make additional money and have constructive activities leading up to school.” But Brown’s “X amount” has nearly tripled under Fenty, so it’s laughable to say there’s no politics at play.
The government cannot create jobs, it can only create payroll.
Put it on a bumper sticker and teach your children well.
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Categories: National Service,Politics
How about making only students earning C’s or above eligible for the program? That should cut it down a bit.
Unfortunately, that would likely lead only to grade inflation/finagling/hopefully not outright falsification, in order to qualify individuals for the “free” money.
If the gubbamint or the teacher’s onions have anything to with with it all those things can be guranteed. Throw a laywer or two in it and you’ll really screw the taxpayer.
50% over budget? That is about right for city, county, state, and fed elected using taxpayers money!
L
An oversight session is supposed to look at how to reduce costs and keep them under control.
That wasn’t an oversight session, that was a propaganda rally.
I wonder if the kids were required to join seiu and pay dues before they could work? This program sounds like what seiu would do with the kids.
L
Then let’s deport us some illegals and give these kids jobs that adult americans won’t do.
Liberals have no learning capacity … Only ideology.
Grew up in D.C..
Worked one summer (maaaaany years ago) for the D.C. Government as supervisor/payroll mgr. for this program.
It should be called the P.T.D.N. Program:
Paid To Do Nothing
Paying people to not act like the thugs they are.
Insanity.
Seriously, what does DC need 20,000 minimum wage employees doing in a city that’s less than 10 square miles?
Bingo! Pretty much describes just about every govt. youth “employment” program. In my wife’s divison in a Los Angeles city dept, maybe 1 of the 6 or youth in their program actually do some work, usually so-called youth “work” program haphazard or lacadasical filing and other assorted busy work – the rest, unsupervised, seem to disappear for most of the day, play at the computer stations, on the phone, and often find exuses to come in late, leave early, or not come in at all for days at a time. A waste.
These kids are the products of generations who have been taught they are owed everything without earning it and lack even basic skills in social behavior, communication, work and ethics.
It should be called S.R.A.A. – summer riot abatement act!
Typical redistribution from the taxpayers to our brothers of Obama. The real answer to the Bush tax cut reinstatement is to reinstate ALL the cuts so the lowest earners would go from 0% to 10% and see how these (_*_) like those bush tax cuts then.
OT Michelle you are involved in hot air, who is this putz allapundit?
SEIU Youth Training Brigade..
no surprised here…nothing new to see, move along.
In the past, that is the way kids were introduced to working. Start at the bottom in the least attractive jobs, gain experience, get an education and work your way up, provided you’ve got the will and incentive to do so.
Until kids stop sponging off their enablers:parents, cash from Uncle Sap, govt. regs which often discourage hiring minors, and learn some good old fashioned work ethic in earing an income, employers will still hire illegals, if they can get away with it. Illegals seem to be more desperate for income than too many of our own youth (and many adults).
They don’t want jobs, they want cash. Why do they need a job when they have government and political apparatchiks stealing money for them? Really, what productive work could they actually accomplish anyway? I guess being able to say they have a “job” makes them feel that all important “pride”.
***
We have had the greatest youth jobs programs in place for the last 100 years.
***
It’s called University and Community College. And for the last 60 years or so the excellent government student loan program has GIVEN ALL PERSONS the way to better their earning power–by using these programs and working hard for a better future.
***
No need for more “YUT” programs. Just stop funding them and let them decide if they want to work for a future–or if they want to join the new Comrade Obama (PBUH) Funemployment / homeless class.
***
John Bibb
***
Socialist
Youth
Empowerment
Project
Beware of ANY government sponsored program targeting one specific future voting block. This is just another progressive attempt at brain-washing our youth…apparently, the education system hasn’t done a good enough job of dumbing down, and socializing the chillin’s. Solution: throw more money at it.
Hmm, $22.7 million divided up between 20,000 people at minimum wage ($8 an hour) means that each person is employed for 17 days.
Sounds like they underestimated the original cost. When has THAT ever happened in a government program?
No, but they sure know how to kill them in the private sector.
Well, these bureaucrats/spend-spend-spenders of tax monies did actually overlook things, rather than look tings over…their lack of supervision (Latin for “oversee”) did result in “an oversight”, rather than actual oversight(overseeing), no?
Forced “volunteering” for community service.
I thought that was what we would all be doing under Obama. What happened?
How about this as an idea: Eliminate the minimum wage. Then private sector employers can get more youth off the streets during the summer.
Another gov program which has over spent, under planned and lacks success. No surprises here.
Another confirmation that Democrats only lust for power; they don’t care who suffers in the process.
Um, that was a rhetorical question, right?
One of my former neighbors used to work for the DC city government. He used to tell me that the only solution to any problem was to hire more people. He wasn’t allowed to fire anyone. So if the work didn’t get done, they obviously needed more people.
This summer youth program is the perfect training ground for that mentality.
ergo, the term “useful idiots”, as it doesn’t dawn on the poor and downtrodden that they are being used…happily (seemingly) devouring what crumbs are tossed their way.
And another reason why government should not be taking money from the people to set up any “programs” to help people. It just becomes about politics, especially with Obama and his ilk.
The government should stick to safety, and security.
What example does this set for those young people?
1. Feed on the system
2. Game the system
Where’s the project that teaches kids to produce a product, run a business, make a profit, and pay the taxes that feed those who feed off the system?
Your comment reminded me of this exerpt from Animal Farm. Democrat inner cities in a nutshell.
Rations, reduced in December, were reduced again in February, and lanterns in the stalls were forbidden to save oil. But the pigs seemed comfortable enough, and in fact were putting on weight if anything.
One afternoon in late February a warm, rich, appetising scent, such as the animals had never smelt before, wafted itself across the yard from the little brew-house, which had been disused in Jones’s time, and which stood beyond the kitchen. Someone said it was the smell of cooking barley. The animals sniffed the air hungrily and wondered whether a warm mash was being prepared for their supper. But no warm mash appeared, and on the following Sunday it was announced that from now onwards all barley would be reserved for the pigs.
The field beyond the orchard had already been sown with barley. And the news soon leaked out that every pig was now receiving a ration of a pint of beer daily, with half a gallon for Napoleon himself, which was always served to him in the Crown Derby soup tureen.
On August 3rd, 2010 at 3:40 pm, happy2behere said:
They’re being trained to be good little socialist lackeys, not businessmen.
You have to recall when/why these programs were even started; it had to do with the youth violence back in the ’60s; not enough jobs, no one hiring ‘youth’ and they not wanting to work between gigs in school.
In other words, they were bored. And they didn’t want to pull weeks/push lawnmowers, flip burgers.
So governments, to lower ‘crime rates’ invented ‘youth jobs’ and employment in big cities to lower their crime rates. Kids doing muggings, snatch-n-grabs, auto theft, etc all dropped a bit.
Success, in some areas. So, they invented MORE youth jobs. And MORE…