If Republicans Don’t Have A Problem With Detention Centers On Human Rights Grounds, Maybe They Will For Wasting Taxpayer Money

CQ reports that the US government is paying contractors over $700 a day to house children in border detention camps.  They cite an NBC report based on information from a Department of Health and Human Services administrator.

“The cost of holding migrant children who have been separated from their parents in newly created "tent cities" is $775 per person per night, according to an official at the Department of Health and Human Services — far higher than the cost of keeping children with their parents in detention centers or holding them in more permanent buildings.”

You can slice and dice the numbers anyway you want, but there are a couple of things that are obvious here:  The government is paying way too much.

This is either because:
A.  They are horribly inefficient
B.  They are making contractors very rich
C.  They have no imagination to figure out better ways to do this
D.  They want the detainees to suffer as much as possible to deter others
E.  They want the detainees to suffer as much as possible because they are sadistic
F.   A combination of some or all of the above

But we could put all these people into decent hotels and feed them well at these prices.  Someone’s getting rich.  Someone who’s probably benefiting from the new tax law.  Someone who probably contributed significantly to the Trump campaign.  (I said probably.  I don’t have the facts.  Let’s consider this a suggestion for a journalist who needs a good story.)

And yes, I agree with anyone who thinks that NBC should have given the name of the person who supplied the numbers.