# Is eliminating governmental wa$te and fraud a good thing?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eliminating-governmental-wa-te-and-fraud-a-good-thing/1013959>\
**Category:** Politics & Elections\
**Tags:** trump\
**Created:** [February 6, 2025, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eliminating-governmental-wa-te-and-fraud-a-good-thing/1013959 "2025-02-06T16:49:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 111

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**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2025, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eliminating-governmental-wa-te-and-fraud-a-good-thing/1013959/111 "2025-02-07T14:14:05Z")

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And if you’re really worried about “waste”, there’s a lot of new waste happening _right now_. Found in [another one of the Trump threads](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-trump-confused/996589/3665):

> The four deportation flights to Guatemala came at a steep cost. The Guatemalan government confirmed that a C-17 military transport plane landed on Monday with 64 deportees on board.
> 
> Accounting for the per-hour operating cost, those expenses reached around $4,675 per person—far exceeding the roughly $850 price of a first-class commercial ticket from El Paso to Guatemala City.
> 
> In contrast, deportation flights operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which use Boeing 737 and McDonnell Douglas MD-80 aircraft, cost about $630 per deported.

Pure. Waste.

Doing the same job that was being done just a few months ago, but at literally 7 times the cost, purely for political appearances, because Trump wants to “look tough”.

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