Let's start today with data from a Washington Post from article February 18, 2010. The article reports on an analysis by the organization, Taxpayers For Common Sense. They issued their annual report showing that in 2010 the Federal government will spend about $15.6 billion on over 10,000 Federal budget earmarks. Recall that earmarks are special funding buckets that sitting politicians can use to direct Federal taxpayer money to their home state or Congressional district for use on projects and initiatives in their state/district or are special buckets of money directed to all types of organizations (companies, non-profits, etc.) that usually, in turn, donate some of the organization's money to the politician's re-election campaign.
What are these buckets of money spent on? Anderson Cooper of CNN recently reported that the following efforts received earmark funding:
- $200,000 for the Arkansas Commercial Driver Training Institute
- $150,000 for educational programs at the Washington DC National Building Museum
- $134,000 for the Montana Trade Center
- $100,000 for the Myrtle Beach International Trade And Conference Center
- $500,000 For exhibits at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium In Iowa
- $200,000 for the Washington (state) Opera
- $150,000 for exhibits at the Teddy Roosevelt Inaugural Site
- $1,000,000 to renovate the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Music Hall
- $400,000 to renovate the Ritz Theater in New York
- $350,000 to renovate the Uptown Theater in Philadelphia
- $250,000 to construct the Monroe County Farmers' Market in Kentucky
- $100,000 to construct the Santa Ana River Trail in California
- $250,000 to renovate the Murphy Theater in Ohio
- $500,000 for the Brown Snake Program (yes, this was in the Defense budget)
- $1.800,000 to renovate the Fort Hamilton Community Club in New York
- $5,000,000 for the Presido heritage in San Francisco
- $1,600,000 for the Center For Space Entrepreneurship
- $18,900,000 for a center :dedicated to educating the general public, students, teachers, new Senators and Senate staff about the role and importance of the Senate."
We could go on and on (about 10,000 more times) but you get the picture. Just these eighteen examples alone cost the American taxpayer almost $32 million, money that should have been spent but the state or local governments or the private sector. National taxpayers should not help finance a farmers' makret in Kentucky or a river trail in California. These are bribes, nothing more, to get voters to pony up money and votes to re-elect incumbents.
But what is really screwed up is the following information that was published in the June 20, 2010 issue of Parade magazine, "Government Research Funding For The Top 10 Cancer Killers in 2009." The following numbers come from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the biggest Federal government research funder (Note: the article does point out that some other government agencies fund cancer research but the NCI is the largest):
- Lung and Bronchus - $246.9 million funded by the NCI
- Colon and Rectum - $264.2 million
- Breast - $599.5 million
- Pancreas - $89.7 million
- Prostate - $293.9 million
- Leukemia -- $220.6 million
- Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma - $130.9 million
- Liver - $70.3 million
- Ovary - $110,1 million
- Esophagus - $28.8 million
- Total = $2.037 billion
According to the article, 150,000 people are diagnosed with colorectal cancer every year and 50,000 people die from it. According to the American Cancer Society website, about 180,000 Americans are diagnosed with breast cancer every year and about 40,000 die from it. According to the National Cancer institute, about 220,000 new cases of lung cancer are diagnosed every year and about 157,000 Americans die from it.
Thus, if you take all of the above information, you get the following government and political class screw ups:
- How come, as a country, we allow the political class to spend about 59 times more taxpayer money on earmarks and their re-election efforts than we do on colon cancer research ($15.6 BILLION spent on earmarks and $264.2 MILLION on colon cancer research?
- How come, as a country, we allow the political class to spend about 26 times more taxpayer money on earmarks and their re-election efforts than we do on breast cancer research?
- How come, as a country, we allow the political class to spend about 63 times more taxpayer money on earmarks and their re-election efforts than we do on lung cancer research?
- How come, as a country, we allow the political class to spend $15.6 BILLION on earmarks to support their re-election efforts while almost 250,000 Americans die every year from just these three cancers?
- How come, as a country, we allow the political class to spend $32 million on just the eighteen earmarks listed above when $32 million would represent an almost 50% increase in liver cancer research?
- How come, as a country, we allow the political class to spend over seven times the amount of money in earmarks than we spend on the ten cancers listed above?
- Does the political class really think that building a river trail or a farmer's market with Federal tax dollars is a better use of money than helping solve the cancer riddle?
- While just about every family in America will be affected by cancer at some point in time, how many people will shop at the Monroe County Farmer's Market or will walk the Santa Ana River Trail?
This is what a call a prime example of screwed up government priorities. It gets back to the elitist discussion we have had in the past two posts where the politicians in this country put their interests first and whatever is left over is given back to the citizens. The political class sees their right to issue earmarks in the billions of dollars more important than to help many more Americans fight the battle against cancer. Spending billions for their own self good vs. spending millions for the betterment of the citizens is a major screw up in my opinion.
Three steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would address this situation. First, Step 39 would impose term limits on all Congressional seats so that the perceived need to issue earmarks in exchange for re-election donations would go away since there would be no re-election opportunities, one term and out. Step 4 would occur after the first three steps were executed, i.e. the drastic reduction in Federal government expenditures, and would direct some of those savings from reducing the size of government towards focused efforts to substantially reduce the dire cancer statistics facing the country. And finally, Step 44 would not allow any Federal funding on any project or program unless it was beneficial to a significant number of residents in at least five states. This step would eliminate the river trails and farmers market earmarks immediately.
Despite hollow calls for reducing earmarks over the years, the political class has shown they are addicted to them and the campaign donations that follow. If we eliminated all of the earmarks and gave half of the wasted money money back to the taxpayers, we could still increase cancer research funding by more than three fold if we saved the other half for research. That is the intent of Step 4 and should be intent of a benevolent government, not a screwed up government.
Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Also visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
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