But is there a sense, Steph, that, like, the federal government could do a more effective job monitoring the activity of this money or that state governments, you know, especially in poor states like Mississippi, where maybe they're lacking some of that capacity? Do you think that's a potential thing to be considering here when we're deciding whether state or local government or federal government should be the ones monitoring this kind of stuff?

Oh, that's a great question.

I mean, it's a big country, and every state feels like they're different.

I'm not sure that we all necessarily are that different, but each state feels like they're really individual, uh, and unique.

We've talked about how the federal government sending all this money to states has required state governments to kind of rise to the level to be able to accept that money, right? Because when you get the federal money, you have to comply with all the, you know, the tracking and the recording and all that stuff.

And over the last half of the 20th century, we, we saw this enormous increase in the number of people who work for state governments and the level of professionalism of those people in state governments, and a lot of it had to do with complying with congressional pressure.

Like, we'll give you this money, but you have to, uh, be able to handle it.

Do you have any suggestion on institutional or structural changes that we could make to help prevent or at least reduce the scope of these types of frauds involving public funds?