Retro # 11 - Any Politician Who Thinks The Federal Government Is Entiitled To More Of Any American's Wealth: Priceless

Please note: Due to Thanksgiving holiday week activitiess and family events, we will be rerunning some our most popular past posts from the past year over the next week or so. We will return with fresh, new political class insanity the week after Thanksgiving. Have a Happy Turkey Day!

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• Estimated annual amount of fraud and waste in the Medicare program: $60 - $90 billion
• Estimated annual amount of fraud and waste in the Medicaid program: $30 - $40 billion
• Estimated annual amount of personal taxes not collected by the IRS because of tax evaders: $200 billion
• Estimated amount of fraud in just one of the Federal government's unemployment programs over the past year or so: $19 billion
• Estimated amount of taxpayer money the political class diverted annually to budget earmarks, which are nothing more than thinly disguised re-election campaign fund raising efforts for incumbents: $16 billion
• Estimated annual amount of taxpayer money wasted on unnecessary international U.S. troop deployments in Europe, South Korea, Iraq, and Japan, deployments that no longer serve any national defense purpose: $59 billion
• Estimated annual savings by eliminating subsidies to large agriculture corporations: $8.9 billion
• Estimated annual savings by eliminating tax credits for oil companies that blend gasoline with ethanol: $5.7 billion
• Estimated annual amount the Defense Department spends on obsolete spare parts and supplies: $46 billion
• Estimated savings if the production of the V22 Osprey aircraft was cancelled due to massive cost overruns and performance issues: $6.1 billion
• Estimated savings if the production of the F-35 Joint Striker Fighter was canceled and replaced with more advanced, less expensive, and more reliable military alternatives: $22.5 billion
• Estimated savings by terminating the effort to produce the military's Space Tracking and Surveillance System due to performance issues, delays, and cost overruns and replace it with less expensive, more reliable alternatives: $5 billion
• Estimated savings from canceling the production of the outdated, unreliable, and unneeded Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle: $16.3 billion
• Estimated savings by eliminating identified Homeland Security contracts already deemed to be wasteful: $34.3 billion
• Estimated annual savings if the Federal government liquidated the 55,000 buildings and properties it currently owns, but does not use or severely under uses, at a rate of 10% a year for ten years: $9.6 billion
• Estimated annual savings by realigning Medicare payments to teaching hospitals with actual costs: $5.1 billion
• Estimated annual savings by eliminating over payments for Federal housing subsidies: $1.2 billion
• Estimated number of U.S. bridges that were repaired under Obama's economic stimulus package that did not need any kind repair at all: About 1,100 or about 50% of all of the bridges that were repaired with stimulus dollars.
• Estimated annual, recurring savings from having the Federal government work efficiently, efficiently, and fraud free from the above disasters and embarrassments: $460.5 - $500.5 billion
• Additional savings from the one time expense and cost savings listed above: $93.8 billion
• One year's worth of taxpayer savings if the political class just did their job (annual and onetime savings): $554.3 - $594.3 billion
• President Obama stating that some Americans need to pay more in taxes in the face of this half trillion dollars worth of waste: Priceless

Bottom line is if the political class just did their job, Obama could finance his proposed jobs program without any American paying more in taxes. In fact, he would have about a $100 billion or so extra after one year. He wants to tax the rich in this country an extra $45 billion a year over TEN years to pay for his jobs program. If the Federal government and the political class cleaned up their act we could pay for the whole program, regardless of how inane it is, in ONE year.

The fact that his jobs act will create nary a ripple in the national jobs scene is another reason not to approve of his jobs proposal as it current sits but also increasing taxes in an economy that is very likely in a recession or about to tumble into a recession is ludicrous:

• By his own words, this $450 billion program will "create" 1.9 million jobs.
• By his own words then, his program will cost just under a quarter million dollars for each job "created," and that assumes his program actually creates 1.9 million jobs. In the past, this administration has not been very accurate or consistent with how it defines "creates."
• To get all of the unemployed and underemployed Americans back to work at this rate his program would have to be $3.3 TRILLION or about $29,000 for every U.S. household. Ludicrous.
• The only thing this jobs program is good for now is a sounding board and sound bytes for the President's re-election campaign. Heck, even his buddy, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will not put it up for a vote in the Senate because he knows it will fail. All it is is a campaign wedge to energize his base, a wedge he will use for the next year or so while he allows the economy to whither on the vine.

Better to divide the nation and get a few votes than come up with a real economic strategy and do the dirty work of streamlining government and eliminating waste, fraud, and crime. But this President has never been big on dirty work. But seeing him actually do some government dirty work, cleaning up just one failed and wasteful government program would certainly be priceless.

Note: I can provide unbiased, hard, fact based data for all of the savings listed above if someone wants them. Many of them came from the fine work jointly done by Nicole Tichon of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and Andrew Moylan of the National Taxpayers Union in their research entitled "Toward Common Ground: Bridging The Political Divide to Reduce Spending." Their work is extensive, detailed, documented and best of all, non-partisan. Other sources include reputable and mostly unbiased news organizations such as the Congressional Budget Office.

Also please note that I have not included the amount of fraud lost every year via the Social Security system because I could not find any up-to-date, reliable sources and estimates. However, if it loses money to criminals and fraud at the same rate as the other big Federal government programs, we are probably talking about another $60 to $80 billion lost every year in this program also.