Our public transportation infrastructure literally cost 10x per mile than France or Hong Kong. That's not waste to you? For what California has spent/is spending on high-speed rail from nowhere to nowhere, China blanketed their country?

Notice you also left out police. How's our spending working there?

> The reason you never hear that is because waste and fraud are very low in reality. That’s why this made the news. It’s uncommon.

Fraud might be relatively rare, but we hear about waste constantly and it isn't newsworthy because a high level of waste is expected from a government operation. If it wasn't then there would be good results by putting things under government control, rather than the more realistic outcome of a politically controlled market oscillating erratically between gluts and shortages depending on who won a popularity contest this year.

To be newsworthy political waste generally has to be competitive with wartime levels of destruction. Things like a 2 billion dollars going down the tubes with basically nothing to show for it. Which is similar to the cost/benefit to the US of a day of wild flailing in Iran, US assaults typically run at around a billion dollars per day. If it is less damaging than that then there isn't much point bringing it up because there are bigger fish to fry.

And another, our recidivism rates are much higher than comparable countries. Is that how we do a "good job" helping people?