BEIJING — China on Monday warned other countries against making trade deals with the United States to China’s detriment.

Governments including those of Taiwan, Japan and South Korea have begun negotiations with Washington after President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs against almost all of America’s trading partners on April 2. The import taxes were quickly paused against most countries after markets panicked, but he increased his already steep tariffs against China.

“China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China’s interests,” China’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement. “If this happens, China will never accept it and will resolutely take countermeasures in a reciprocal manner. China is determined and capable of safeguarding its own rights and interests.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said earlier this month the countries currently negotiating trade deals with the U.S. should “approach China as a group” together with Washington.

The U.S. tariffs against other countries are economic bullying, the ministry said in the statement attributed to an unnamed spokesperson.

“Appeasement cannot bring peace, and compromise cannot win respect,” it added. “For one’s own temporary selfish interests, sacrificing the interests of others in exchange for so-called exemptions is like seeking the skin from a tiger. It will ultimately only fail on both ends and harm others without benefiting themselves.”

China said it’s open to talks with Washington but no meetings have been announced.

Trump made China the target of his steepest tariffs, imposing several rounds of tariffs totaling 145% duties on Chinese imports. Beijing has retaliated with tariffs of 125% on U.S. imports.

The tariffs have spooked exporters and stalled shipments, while threatening to drag on the global economy.

DES MOINES, Iowa — A 30-year-old community service program that sends young adults to work on projects across the U.S. was the latest target of the Trump administration ‘s campaign to slash government spending.

AmeriCorps’ National Civilian Community Corps informed volunteers Tuesday that they would exit the program early “due to programmatic circumstances beyond your control,” according to an email obtained by The Associated Press.

The unsigned memo to corps members said NCCC’s “ability to sustain program operations” was impacted by the Trump administration’s priorities and President Donald Trump’s executive order creating the Department of Government Efficiency. Members would be officially dismissed April 30.

AmeriCorps did not respond Wednesday to an AP email seeking comment.

AmeriCorps NCCC, which completed its 30th year last year, employs more than 2,000 people ages 18 to 26 participating for a roughly 10-month service term, according to the program’s website. The teams of corps members are tasked with working on several projects related to education, housing, urban and rural development, land conservation, and disaster relief, driving from one assignment to another across the country.

The agency pays for volunteers’ basic expenses, including housing, meals and a “limited health benefit,” as well as a “modest” living allowance, according to the program. The program also provided members who complete their 1,700-hour service term with funding for future education expenses or to apply to certain student loans. That benefit was worth about $7,300 this service year.

Funding for AmeriCorps and NCCC has long been scrutinized when Congress talks of budget trims. The federal agency’s budget showed NCCC funding amounted to nearly $38 million last fiscal year.

A White House official said the Trump administration questioned using taxpayer money for the program. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

The traditional NCCC volunteers worked with sponsors including community and faith-based based organizations, nonprofits, schools, cities and tribes. Some of the recent service projects included working at a food bank in Washington state, building homes with Habitat for Humanity in North Carolina, and facilitating after school programs in Arizona.

AmeriCorps NCCC also has a partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and, more recently, the U.S. Forest Service. Those volunteers over the last year responded to tornadoes and flooding in Iowa, hurricane damage in North Carolina and wildfires in California, among other natural disasters, when volunteers are especially visible.

Young corps members were told Tuesday night to pack up. Many started long road trips from their latest assignment to campuses in Vicksburg, Mississippi; Vinton, Iowa; Sacramento, California; and Aurora, Colorado. Members would receive their allowance and health coverage through the end of April, according to the memo.

Members were told in the memo that those who have completed 15% or more of their term would be eligible for a prorated amount of their education award.

But Kate Raftery, who was NCCC director from 2011 to 2014, said she’s worried about the corps members, many of whom were the “unusual suspects” who “saw this as a really impactful education or career launching pad.”

“They were not young people who had been striving to be service members somewhere,” Raftery said. “They were looking for an opportunity to improve their life. They were looking for an opportunity to build some skills, and to be part of a community.”

ATLANTA — Good-government advocates, anti-tax conservatives, politicians of various stripes and everyday Americans grouse about “waste, fraud and abuse” across the U.S. government.

President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, led by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, opened the latest chapter for a phrase hailed as common sense and derided as propaganda.

“It’s a very broad idea,” said Matt Weidinger of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “But this phrase ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ obviously means different things to different people.”

Here is a look at this rhetorical cudgel and how it relates to the outset of Trump’s second administration.

Pinpointing the genesis of “waste, fraud and abuse” as political rhetoric is difficult. But the concept and resulting battles are older than the nation: Think “taxation without representation” and the break from Great Britain.

After winning independence, the early American republic reprised the arguments.

Two generations fought over Alexander Hamilton’s national bank — a philosophical forerunner to everything from the Federal Reserve system to Small Business Administration loans, federally backed mortgage securities and bank deposit insurance.

Trump’s populist hero, Andrew Jackson, cast the Second National Bank as a sop to its wealthy stockholders. “There are no necessary evils in government,” the seventh president wrote in one veto message. “Its evils exist only in its abuses.”

Many of Jackson’s fellow Southerners opposed the related “internal improvements” of Henry Clay’s American System. The enslaving planter class viewed the spending for roads, bridges and navigable waterways — long before Washington had “infrastructure weeks” — as an unconstitutional federal overreach that transferred their wealth indirectly to factory owners, bankers and shipping magnates in more industrialized northern states.

Ronald Reagan cemented modern conservatives’ approach in his first inaugural address. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” he said in 1981. “Government is the problem.”

He railed against “the welfare queen” as the public face of an inefficient social safety net and unaccountable federal government. Reagan based the attack, which critics lambasted as a racist trope, on one woman’s criminal fraud case for getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in assistance.

In a forerunner to DOGE, Reagan impaneled a group of private sector CEOs to identify waste. The “Grace Commission,” colloquially named for its chairman, businessman J. Peter Grace, moved more deliberately than DOGE, and its recommendations were not implemented on a broad scale. Reagan and Congress did raise the retirement age for Social Security eligibility.

The federal government spent about $6.7 trillion in fiscal year 2023.

The libertarian Cato Institute counts the biggest-ticket items this way: $3.19 trillion in transfer payments; $1.15 trillion in aid to states; $950 billion in interest payments on national debt; $840 billion in purchases of goods and services; and $560 billion to pay federal workers.

Social Security and Medicare comprise most of Cato’s transfer category, along with programs like food assistance and the earned income tax credit for low-income households. Medicaid accounts for most state aid, which also includes education, transportation and other infrastructure.

The issue for Musk, or perhaps for Trump and Republican majorities in Congress, is that Americans hold conflicting views about the details.

March 2023 polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 6 in 10 U.S. adults said the U.S. government was spending “too much” overall. Yet an AP-NORC poll taken in January 2025 found that about two-thirds of American adults say the U.S. government is spending “too little” on Social Security and education. About 6 and 10 said the same about Medicare, the government health insurance program for older Americans, and assistance to poor Americans.

Most adults also say Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poorest working-age Americans and low-income children, is underfunded. Medicare and Medicaid payments do not go directly to patients but to health care providers — physicians, hospitals, clinics, pharmaceutical companies and medical supply firms in communities across the country.

The Government Accountability Office and other agencies produce regular reports identifying inefficiencies and other problems. The GAO said in 2024 that its enacted recommendations have saved about $667 billion since 2011.

Vivek Ramaswamy, another Trump ally initially involved with DOGE, seized on hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts and programs that Congress may not have reauthorized explicitly. Yet contrary to Ramaswamy’s characterization, most are ongoing programs from veterans medical care to NASA functions.

Trump has not addressed another pool of potential money: the so-called “tax gap.” That’s not about the Republican vs. Democratic debate over rates and loopholes. It’s the estimated gap between what the federal government should collect under existing law and what actually gets paid on time. Like “improper payments,” it’s a mix of clerical error and intentional fraud.

The IRS estimate for the 2022 tax year: $696 billion.

Other government reports identify “improper payments” — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance — that total several hundred billion in typical years.

Weidinger, the AEI budget expert, said that includes some fraudulent spending but is mostly overpayments or payments that require more documentation. Mistakes could include a Social Security payment a month after a recipient has died, a government miscalculation of someone’s benefit, someone getting one unemployment check after getting a new job or an insufficiently documented claim from a health care provider.

But Weidinger also noted that special government programs, such as unemployment during the COVID pandemic, carried a much higher rate of outright fraud — identity thieves, including from foreign nations, gaming the system to get money.

“We won’t ever recover all of that,” he said.

And, he added, the government’s estimates of fraud and improper payments are probably too low even if they almost certainly do not reach the levels of savings Musk and Trump have promised.

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Monday proposed an injection of more than $1 billion into road projects in an effort to address the state’s $30 billion projects backlog, which will again need more than what gas taxes and other fees can provide.

The Republican governor’s budget proposal includes nearly $1 billion in one-time, general state tax money and a plan to shift $80 million annually from the sales tax on tires. It comes two years after Lee and Republican lawmakers approved a similar $3 billion shift of general tax money to roads funding, which is traditionally covered by gas taxes.

The money for roads is one of the big-ticket items in Lee’s $59.5 billion budget proposal for the year that begins in July. Tennessee’s budget has become tighter because tax revenues have slowed compared with the boom times that took shape during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Safe, reliable roads are a primary responsibility of the state, yet there are limited funds to fulfill an unlimited need,” Lee said in prepared remarks during his annual State of the State speech Monday evening.

Some parts of the budget were already filled in after a quick special session last month. Lee convinced lawmakers to pass more than $900 million worth of initiatives from different pots of money. They include a huge expansion of vouchers to help students attend private school, coupled with public school teacher raises; relief for areas devastated by Hurricane Helene; and changes to help President Donald Trump’s administration with its immigration deportation crackdown plans.

Lee elevated roadwork as a priority in 2023, when his legislation included a $3 billion infusion for projects and a hike in electric vehicle and hybrid fees. It also opened the door for allowing express toll lanes on highways through public-private partnerships, which hasn’t been implemented yet as officials initially consider it for a stretch of Interstate 24 from Nashville to the southeastern suburbs.

Tennessee isn’t alone. Many states have likewise taken a variety of steps to supplement their gas taxes, which aren’t keeping up with their needed roadwork as more people drive electric vehicles and hybrids.

Meanwhile, Lee proposed directing $11 million to the Boys and Girls Club to help boost their childcare programs throughout the state, as well as expand eligibility to a state program that supplements childcare worker salaries.

“Today, infant care in Tennessee carries virtually the same price tag as in-state tuition at a four-year public college,” Lee said. “That is an insurmountable cost for the vast majority of moms and dads who want to be in the workforce.”

Lee boasted that his proposals would result in “tens of thousands of new daycare spots across rural and urban Tennessee” but did not provide additional details on how or when that goal would be achieved. Nor did he specify who exactly it would serve. For example, many of the Boys and Girls Club locations in Tennessee only offer daycare services to children 5 years old and up.

Also in Monday’s speech, Lee proposed a $60 million fund that would create 0% construction loans to build single-family homes. And while the governor’s budget does not contain any new tax breaks for Tennesseans, Lee said he plans on funding a tax credit enacted last year that would give incentives to developers building affordable housing.

“These are important steps, and together, we should continue looking for more solutions that are fiscally responsible to finally address the issue of housing –- through innovation, not through regulation,” Lee said.

Lee is proposing tens of millions of dollars more to invest in nuclear energy, as well. In his plan, the state would contribute $50 million to help the Tennessee Valley Authority develop a small modular reactor. The federal utility has applied for an $800 million U.S. Department of Energy grant for the initiative.

WASHINGTON — From an ice cream parlor in California to a medical supply business in North Carolina to a T-shirt vendor outside Detroit, U.S. businesses are bracing to take a hit from the taxes President Donald Trump imposed Saturday on imports from Canada, Mexico and China — America’s three biggest trading partners.

The levies — 25% on Canadian and Mexican and 10% on Chinese goods – will take effect Tuesday. Canadian energy, including oil, natural gas and electricity, will be taxed at a lower 10% rate.

Mexico’s president immediately ordered retaliatory tariffs and Canada’s prime minister said the country would put matching 25% tariffs on up to $155 billion in U.S. imports. China did not immediately respond to Trump’s action.

The Budget Lab at Yale University estimates that Trump’s tariffs would cost the average American household $1,000 to $1,200 in annual purchasing power.

Gregory Daco, chief economist at the tax and consulting firm EY, calculates that the tariffs would increase inflation, which was running at a 2.9% annual rate in December, by 0.4 percentage points this year. Daco also projects that the U.S. economy, which grew 2.8% last year, would fall by 1.5% this year and 2.1% in 2026 “as higher import costs dampen consumer spending and business investment.’’

The Penny Ice Creamery in Santa Cruz, California, has had to hike prices of its ice cream — including popular flavors “strawberry pink peppercorn’’ and “chocolate caramel sea salt’’ — repeatedly in recent years as an inflationary surge increased the cost of its supplies.

“I feel bad about always having to raise prices,’’ said co-owner Zach Davis. “We were looking forward to inflation coming down, the economy stabilizing in 2025 … Now with the tariffs, we may be back at it again.’’

Trump tariffs, Davis said, threaten to drive up the cost of the mostly made-in-China refrigerators, freezers and blenders he’ll need if Penny Ice Creamery goes ahead with plans to add to its six shops. He still has painful memories of the extra equipment costs the company had to absorb when Trump slapped massive tariffs on China during his first term.

The new tariffs will also raise the price of a customer favorite — sprinkles — which Penny Ice Creamery imports from a company in Whitby, Ontario. Tacking a 25% import tax on even something as small as that can damage a small business like his.

“The margins are so slim,’’ he said. “Being able to offer that add-on can maybe generate an additional 10 cents in profit per scoop. If a tariff wipes that out, that can really be the difference between being profitable and being break-even and even being underwater by the end of the year.’’

In Asheville, North Carolina, Casey Hite, CEO of Aeroflow Health, expects to take a hit because his company gets more than half its supplies — including breast pumps — from Chinese manufacturers, providing them to American patients through insurance plans. Aeroflow Health gets paid by insurers at pre-negotiated rates, put in place before Trump decided on his tariffs.

Hite said the tax on Chinese imports would hit the company’s finances, forcing it either to purchase cheaper and lower-quality products or pass higher costs along via higher health insurance premiums. Those might take two years to materialize, Hite said, but eventually they would hit consumers’ budgets.

“It will impact the patients,” Hite said. “In time, patients pay more for the products.”

Even the made-in-USA absorbent incontinence pads Aeroflow Health buys aren’t safe from Trump’s import taxes. They may include pulp from tariff target Canada and plastics and packaging from China, according to the Aeroflow Health, which warns of “turbulences” from the tariffs.

“Is this going to affect our business? You bet it is,’’ said Linda Schlesinger-Wagner, who owns skinnytees, a women’s apparel company in Birmingham, Michigan, north of Detroit, that imports clothing from China. She said the 10% tax would increase her costs, though she plans to absorb the extra expense instead of passing it along to customers.

“I don’t like what’s going on,’’ she said, referring to the broader impact of the tariffs. “And I think people are going to be truly shocked at the pricing they’re going to see on the cars, on the lumber, on the clothes, on the food. This is going to be a mess.’’

William Reinsch, a former U.S. trade official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that many companies that stocked up on imported goods ahead of time to avoid the tariffs. They will be able to draw on their piled-up inventories for weeks or a couple of months, delaying their customers’ pain.

George Carrillo, CEO of the Hispanic Construction Council, an industry advocacy group, said construction companies have been hoarding materials in anticipation of Trump’s actions, but he worries about the possibility of inflation spiking in three to six months.

“Once that inventory starts to get low, we’re going to start feeling the effects,” Carillo said in a phone interview Saturday, ahead of the announcement. “Developers and general contractors need to keep up with the pace and they’re going to start buying more products and it’s going to be at a higher price point.”

All that will be exacerbated by an emerging immigration crackdown that is already spooking the construction industry’s labor pool, he said.

“You put tariffs and you put workforce instability, it’s going to create major delays in projects. It’s going to create an increase in prices because of the lack of availability,” Carrillo said.

Then there are the industries that don’t have the luxury of stockpiling, including supermarkets whose farm products will spoil. So the tariff impact will show up on grocery shelves within days.

“You don’t stockpile avocados,’’ Reinsch said. “You don’t stockpile cut flowers. You don’t stockpile bananas.’’

In the tomato trading hub of Nogales, Arizona, produce vendor Rod Sbragia, who followed his father into the business nearly four decades ago, worries that the import levies will force some distribution companies out of business and “would be detrimental to the American consumer, to the choices they have at the supermarket.”

Sbragia voted for Trump in the past three elections and calls himself a “staunch Republican.” The president, he said, must not have been properly advised on the matter.

“When we’re worried about cost to consumers, inflationary pressures and the overall health of our population,’’ he asked, “why are we going to make it more difficult to get access to fresh fruits and vegetables?”

American farmers are also likely to get caught in Trump’s trade tussle with Canada, China and Mexico. The president’s supporters in rural America make a tempting target for retaliatory tariffs. That is what happened in Trump’s first term when other countries, notably China, slapped back against the president’s tariffs with levies of their own on things like soybeans and pork. In response, Trump spent billions in taxpayer money to compensate them for lost sales and lower prices.

Many farmers are now counting on the president to come through and protect them from reprisals.

“The Trump administration provided a safety net,” said former tobacco grower Lee Wicker, deputy director of the North Carolina Growers Association, a collection of 700 farms that lawfully brings in foreign temporary laborers to work the fields through a federal visa program. Many of the association’s farmers “trust him that he’s going to take care of anybody who’s hurt by the tariffs, and that’s really all that we can ask for.”

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AP Staff Writers Mae Anderson and Cedar Attanasio in New York; Mike Householder in Birmingham, Michigan; Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina; Gabriel Sandoval in Phoenix; and Didi Tang and Christopher Rugaber in Washington contributed to this story.

DAVOS, Switzerland — Billionaires’ wealth grew three times faster in 2024 than the year before, a top anti-poverty group reported on Monday as some of the world’s political and financial elite prepared for an annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland.

Oxfam International, in its latest assessment of global inequality timed to the opening of the World Economic Forum meeting, also predicts at least five trillionaires will crop up over the next decade. A year ago, the group forecast that only one trillionaire would appear during that time.

OxFam’s research adds weight to a warning by outgoing President Joe Biden last week of a “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of very few ultra-wealthy people.” The group’s sharp-edged report, titled “Takers Not Makers,” also says the number of people in poverty has barely budged since 1990.

The World Economic Forum expects to host some 3,000 attendees, including business executives, academics, government officials, and civic group leaders at its annual meeting in the Alpine village of Davos.

President-elect Donald Trump, who visited Davos twice during his first term and was set to take the oath of office on Monday, is expected to take part in the forum’s event by video on Thursday. He has long championed wealth accumulation — including his own — and counts multibillionaire Elon Musk as a top adviser.

“What you’re seeing at the moment is a billionaire president taking oaths today, backed by the richest man. So this is pretty much the jewel in the crown of the global oligarchies,” Amitabh Behar, executive director of Oxfam International, said in an interview, referring to Trump and Musk.

“It’s not about one specific individual. It’s the economic system that we have created where the billionaires are now pretty much being able to shape economic policies, social policies, which eventually gives them more and more profit,” he added.

Like Biden’s call for making billionaires “begin to pay their fair share” through the U.S. tax code, Oxfam — a global advocacy group — called on governments to tax the richest to reduce inequality and extreme wealth, and to “dismantle the new aristocracy.”

The group called for steps like the break-up of monopolies, capping CEO pay, and regulation of corporations to ensure they pay “living wages” to workers.

Many investors racked up strong gains in 2024, with strong performances for top tech companies and stock-market indexes like the S&P 500, as well as the price of gold and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Oxfam said billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion last year, or roughly $5.7 billion a day, three-times faster than in 2023. The number of billionaires rose by 204 to 2,769, and the 10 richest men saw their wealth rise nearly $100 million a day on average, it said.

Citing World Bank data, the group pointed to lingering poverty, saying the number of people living on less than $6.85 per day has “barely changed” since 1990. Oxfam used Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire List” as of end-November for data on the ultra-rich.

By contrast, at least four new billionaires were “minted” every week in 2024, and three-fifths of billionaire wealth comes from inheritance, monopoly power or “crony connections,” it said.

On average, Oxfam said, low- and middle-income countries are spending nearly half their national budgets on debt repayments. It also noted that life expectancy in Africa is just under 64 years of age, compared to over 79 years in Europe.

Despite the growing gap between the über rich and the poor, the annual Davos confab, which formally begins on Tuesday, will likely focus this year again on making money and doing deals, with strongman leaders on the rise in some Western countries and progressive causes like diversity and climate change waning in the business world.

The continued rise of artificial intelligence as a tool for business to reap greater efficiencies will also again be a central theme in Davos, despite worries in many sectors that AI could upend many white-collar jobs and displace workers in an array of industries.

Trump’s return for a second term will likely be on many lips in Davos, as will lingering conflicts, including wars in Ukraine and Sudan, along with hopes for a continuation of a cease-fire that began on Sunday between Hamas and Israel, pausing their devastating 15-month war in Gaza.

Forum organizers last week issued a survey conducted among 900 experts for “Global Risks Report,” which found that conflicts between countries was the top concern, followed by extreme weather, economic confrontation, misinformation and disinformation, and “societal polarization” — a nod to the gap between rich and poor.

As in past years, protesters calling for more economic equality, taxing the rich and pressing other demands took to the streets. Some blocked roads to Davos, snarling traffic in places and delaying trips for some attendees to the event, which runs through Friday.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — It turns out that $1.8 billion in South Carolina state funds weren’t just sitting in a bank account waiting to be spent. Instead, it was an accounting error compounded over years instead of being reconciled, an independent forensic audit determined.

The announcement Wednesday dashed ideas like returning the money to taxpayers or using the windfall on roads. But it also led to more questions: why wasn’t the error reported when it was first discovered back around 2018, and should the elected state treasurer, Curtis Loftis, step down or be impeached.

“In the private sector, if anybody had made a blunder of $1.8 billion — whether it was an error, negligence, misfeasance, malfeasance, fraud or a cover-up, they would lose their job,” said Republican state Sen. Larry Grooms, who leads a committee investigating the accounting problems.

The private audit, which cost millions of dollars, is the most comprehensive look so far into the South Carolina Treasurer and Comptroller General’s Office. Those agencies are typically led by elected officials and are in charge of making sure that government accounts stay balanced.

The audit isn’t the final word on the matter. Investigators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, are trying to determine if it was just a series of mistakes or whether state employees figured out what was going on and tried to cover it up, Grooms said.

Depending on how serious the allegations are, the state could see its rates to borrow money rise, pay fines or face other punishment.

In a separate case, the elected Republican comptroller general — the state’s top accountant — resigned in 2023 after his agency started double-posting the amount the state had sent to colleges and universities for a decade, leading to a different $3.5 billion error that also was all on paper.

While Richard Eckstrom stepped aside in that case, Loftis has defended himself and his office.

The problems with the $1.8 billion error started as the state changed computer systems in the 2010s. Grooms said the initial mistake happened when Loftis, whose job is to write checks for the state, shifted accounts from the old system to the new one.

Loftis testified under oath before senators last year that he invested the money in the mystery $1.8 billion account and made nearly $200 million in interest for the state, which Grooms said seems impossible since there was no money there. The senator said Loftis also appears to have lied under oath when he said their was no federal investigation into his office.

Loftis issued a statement Wednesday thanking the audit firm Alix Partners for its work. He did not address the statements from Grooms.

“The citizens of South Carolina can be confident that their money is safe,” Loftis said. “We, along with our state partners, look forward to reviewing the report in its entirety.”

Gov. Henry McMaster said he has confidence in everyone going forward to handle the state’s accounts and doesn’t think there was any intention to deceive anyone.

“It was an accounting error with no criminal conduct, no wrongful intent, no intent to make the error — errors sometimes happen and unfortunately, that was a big one,” McMaster told reporters.

Among other recommendations, the audit said South Carolina should hire a third-party auditor to look over the shoulders of the Treasurer and Comptroller General offices to make sure the state’s accounting books are properly kept.

The state has its own auditor, but that person is hired by a five-person board that includes both the treasurer and comptroller general. Lawmakers are likely to look into why that person didn’t raise the alarm about the accounting problems sooner, Grooms said.

Meetings have already been scheduled with a House subcommittee, and the Senate Finance Committee will likely call Loftis to testify by the end of the month, Grooms said.

South Carolina has had a long history of accounting issues.

The Treasurer’s Office was created when the state’s first constitution was written in 1776. Back then, the General Assembly selected the treasurer. But by the early 1800s, the state’s finances were in “a state of bewildering confusion” and no one could “tell the amounts of debts or of the credit of the State,” according to History of South Carolina, a book edited in 1920 by Yates Snowden and Howard Cutler.

The first comptroller general determined the state was owed about $750,000 in debts, which would be worth about $20 million today.

CONCORD, N.H. — Former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte was sworn as the 83rd governor of New Hampshire on Thursday, promising to bring people together and prodding young people to “step up and contribute.”

“I am going to be a governor for you, whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, independent, you name it. Our state is so much bigger than a party or an ideology,” she said in remarks prepared for delivery. “Good government knows no party, so let’s show folks that even when partisanship is at a fever pitch, we can set a different example.”

Ayotte succeeds fellow Republican Chris Sununu, whose decision against seeking a fifth two-year term set up on one of the most competitive gubernatorial races in the country. Promising to continue Sununu’s anti-tax, pro-business economic policies, Ayotte defeated five opponents in September’s GOP primary and Democratic former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig in the November election.

In her inaugural speech, Ayotte said she would keep the state on a prosperous path but warned that belt-tightening would be necessary as lawmakers write the next two-year budget.

“We are going to have to look to find better ways to do things with fewer dollars,” she said. “Just like that family making hard decisions, there’s things we can’t skimp on — protecting our most vulnerable and serving those most in need.”

Ayotte is the third woman to be elected governor of New Hampshire, following Democrats Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, both of whom are now U.S. senators. They were the first and second women in the nation to serve in the Senate after being governor. Ayotte is the first woman to do so in reverse, according to Eric Ostermeier, a research fellow at the University of Minnesota and author of the Smart Politics news site.

While more than 150 sitting or former governors have become senators, Ayotte is among just 23 sitting or former senators elected governor since 1900, Ostermeier said. In an interview in October, Ayotte said that experience will serve her well.

“Not only do I understand how Washington works, but also how to fight for New Hampshire. I still have relationships there, across the aisle, with important people making decisions in Washington,” she said. “So I do feel like it does broaden my skill set as governor doing this in reverse.”

A narrow loss to Hassan in 2016 ended Ayotte’s tenure in Washington after one term. Before that, Ayotte spent five years as the state’s attorney general, and she often highlighted her past as a prosecutor during her campaign.

She repeated that Thursday, saying her top priority remains keeping the state safe. She also cited the state’s housing crisis as a top issue she plans to tackle, and she praised Republicans for expanding the state’s school voucher program. Without offering details, she also announced plans to ban cellphones in schools.

“Screens are negatively impacting our learning environments, drawing students’ attention away from their classes, and becoming a barrier for teachers to do their jobs,” she said. “No more.”

Ayotte said she looks forward to talking to students visiting the Statehouse and urging them to embrace public service.

“If we don’t teach our kids about it, they aren’t going to learn it,” she said. “It is so important to root our lives in something bigger than ourselves, and it is critical to the health of our state and our communities that our next generation step up and contribute.”

WASHINGTON — A tax break for millionaires, and almost everyone else.

An end to the COVID-19-era government subsidies that some Americans have used to purchase health insurance.

Limits to food stamps, including for women and children, and other safety net programs. Rollbacks to Biden-era green energy programs. Mass deportations. Government job cuts to “drain the swamp.”

Having won the election and sweeping to power, Republicans are planning an ambitious 100-day agenda with President-elect Donald Trump in the White House and GOP lawmakers in a congressional majority to accomplish their policy goals.

Atop the list is the plan to renew some $4 trillion in expiring GOP tax cuts, a signature domestic achievement of Trump’s first term and an issue that may define his return to the White House.

“What we’re focused on right now is being ready, Day 1,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., after meeting recently with GOP colleagues to map out the road ahead.

The policies emerging will revive long-running debates about America’s priorities, its gaping income inequities and the proper size and scope of its government, especially in the face of mounting federal deficits now approaching $2 trillion a year.

The discussions will test whether Trump and his Republican allies can achieve the kinds of real-world outcomes wanted, needed or supported when voters gave the party control of Congress and the White House.

“The past is really prologue here,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, recalling the 2017 tax debate.

Trump’s first term became defined by those tax cuts, which were approved by Republicans in Congress and signed into law only after their initial campaign promise to “repeal and replace” Democratic President Barack Obama’s health care law sputtered, failing with the famous thumbs-down vote by then-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

The GOP majority in Congress quickly pivoted to tax cuts, assembling and approving the multitrillion-dollar package by year’s end.

In the time since Trump signed those cuts into law, the big benefits have accrued to higher-income households. The top 1 percent — those making nearly $1 million and above — received about a $60,000 income tax cut, while those with lower incomes got as little as a few hundred dollars, according to the Tax Policy Center and other groups. Some people ended up paying about the same.

“The big economic story in the U.S. is soaring income equality,” said Owens. “And that is actually, interestingly, a tax story.”

In preparation for Trump’s return, Republicans in Congress have been meeting privately for months and with the president-elect to go over proposals to extend and enhance those tax breaks, some of which would otherwise expire in 2025.

That means keeping in place various tax brackets and a standardized deduction for individual earners, along with the existing rates for so-called pass-through entities such as law firms, doctors’ offices or businesses that take their earnings as individual income.

Typically, the price tag for the tax cuts would be prohibitive. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that keeping the expiring provisions in place would add some $4 trillion to deficits over a decade.

Adding to that, Trump wants to include his own priorities in the tax package, including lowering the corporate rate, now at 21% from the 2017 law, to 15%, and doing away with individual taxes on tips and overtime pay.

But Avik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, said blaming the tax cuts for the nation’s income inequality is “just nonsense” because tax filers up and down the income ladder benefited. He instead points to other factors, including the Federal Reserve’s historically low interest rates that enable borrowing, including for the wealthy, on the cheap.

“Americans don’t care if Elon Musk is rich,” Roy said. “What they care about is, what are you doing to make their lives better?”

Typically, lawmakers want the cost of a policy change to be offset by budget revenue or reductions elsewhere. But in this case, there’s almost no agreed-upon revenue raisers or spending cuts in the annual $6 trillion budget that could cover such a whopping price tag.

Instead, some Republicans have argued that the tax breaks will pay for themselves, with the trickle-down revenue from potential economic growth. Trump’s tariffs floated this past week could provide another source of offsetting revenue.

Some Republicans argue there’s precedent for simply extending the tax cuts without offsetting the costs because they are not new changes but existing federal policy.

“If you’re just extending current law, we’re not raising taxes or lowering taxes,” said Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the incoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, on Fox News.

He said the criticism that tax cuts would add to the deficit is “ridiculous.” There is a difference between taxes and spending, he said, “and we just have to get that message out to America.”

At the same time, the new Congress will also be considering spending reductions, particularly to food stamps and health care programs, goals long sought by conservatives as part of the annual appropriations process.

One cut is almost certain to fall on the COVID-19-era subsidy that helps defray the cost of health insurance for people who buy their own policies via the Affordable Care Act exchange.

The extra health care subsidies were extended through 2025 in Democratic President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which also includes various green energy tax breaks that Republicans want to roll back.

The House Democratic leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, scoffed at the Republican claim that they’ve won “some big, massive mandate” — when in fact, the House Democrats and Republicans essentially fought to a draw in the November election, with the GOP eking out a narrow majority.

“This notion about some mandate to make massive, far-right extreme policy changes, it doesn’t exist — it doesn’t exist,” Jeffries said.

Republicans are planning to use a budgetary process, called reconciliation, that allows majority passage in Congress, essentially along party lines, without the threat of a filibuster in the Senate that can stall out a bill’s advance unless 60 of the 100 senators agree.

It’s the same process Democrats have used when they had the power in Washington to approve the Inflation Reduction Act and Obama’s health care law over GOP objections.

Republicans have been here before with Trump and control of Congress, which is no guarantee they will be able to accomplish their goals, particularly in the face of resistance from Democrats.

Still, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who has been working closely with Trump on the agenda, has promised a “breakneck” pace in the first 100 days “because we have a lot to fix.”