As our national debt soars over $16 TRILLION, I dare anyone to justify this kind of spending when we are burdening ourselves, our kids and our grandkids with TRILLIONS of dollars in debt, debt that was caused in no small part by these types of inane and self serving political expenditures. I dare you.
Before we go through today's despicable wastes of money, consider one historical fact. Several decades ago, the Statue Of Liberty was in need of serious and expensive refurbishment. The Statue of Liberty has been a symbol of our country's promise for decades. It represents our freedoms and liberties and the fundamental promise of a good life that drew millions of immigrants past her in New York harbor over the centuries.
Despite her historical and iconic status, not a single Federal taxpayer dollar was spent in her refurbishment. The cost of the refurbishment was covered via private and corporate donations. Thus, if the Statue of Liberty was not worthy of taxpayer dollars for her refurbishment, then none of the programs listed below, including sponsoring a traveling comedy troupe, building a sculpture garden honoring Herbert Hoover's wife, sponsoring the Alabama Wartermelon queen, and others, should be receiving any taxpayer money either. Let their advocates raise their own funds, much like people did to fix up the Statue Of Liberty.
The Senator's entire "Wastebook" report can be accessed at:
http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=b7b23f66-2d60-4d5a-8bc5-8522c7e1a40e
This link contains a lot more detail behind the disgraceful spending of the Federal political class.
After these 50 examples, we will put forth some simple steps that we would implement to eliminate these wasteful spending practices and programs. As the Senator points out in his publication, you cannot start saving TRILLIONS of dollars until you start saving billions of dollars. And you cannot start saving billions of dollars until you start saving millions of dollars and so forth.
Thus, while none of these 100 examples will balance the Federal government's budget, remember that these types of programs exist by the tens of thousands across the entire Federal bureaucracy. To quote an old saying: "A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, pretty soon you are talking about soon real money."
The second shameful fifty:
51) This year, identity thieves will collect an estimated $3.9 billion in tax refunds on fraudulent returns they will file using stolen Social Security numbers (SSN). The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) released an investigation this year outlining what the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) needs to do more to prevent rampant tax fraud. Over five years, taxpayers could lose more than $20 billion to crooks. These losses are largely preventable with better anti-fraud measures.
52) The Star Wars Day event, held at the Abington Public Library in Massachusetts, was paid for with $365 in Federal funds, part of an $11,700 grant provided by the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services.
53) NASA funded a state-of-the-art visitor center to replace an existing one five miles down the road. The need for a new facility was certainly not driven by an overwhelming number of visitors. The previous visitor center, which closed this year, received fewer than 40,000 visitors a year on average since 2007 – or roughly 100 people a day.
54) Over the last three years, the National Endowment for the Arts has awarded $84,000 – including $20,000 in 2012 – to the Circus Day Foundation to host a theatrical circus arts program for students.
55) Watching television reruns gives people an energizing chance to reconnect with pseudo-friends, according to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study published this year. Researchers used part of $666,905 in NIH grants to look at the phenomenon.
56) The Federal Bureau of Prisons still spends about $1.3 million every year to create hard copies of prisoner x-rays. The bureau also spends taxpayer dollars to mail the copies to different institutions when prisoners are transferred.
The bureau could cut back on waste by using digital x-rays instead, which are available for almost instantaneous analysis. Since they would be stored as computer files, the x-rays also could easily be transferred to other doctors and prisons.
57) To give lawyers a leg up, the National Science Foundation (the NSF is turning into the superstar of wasteful spending) has awarded a $500,000 for LawMeets, an online training program for rookie attorneys. Shouldn’t these new lawyers have been properly trained in law school or they do need additional training, why isn’t their law firms not picking up the tab?
58) In 2002, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) was created to rapidly field and update numerous missile defense systems. In its first decade, the MDA spent over $80 billion developing the Ballistic Missile Defense System.
However, in order to meet an unfeasible development schedule, the agency used a risky, haphazard “concurrent” acquisition strategy. Under the strategy, production of new weapons systems begins before design and testing are complete. This illogical approach resulted in $1 billion unnecessarily being spent to fulfill the MDA requirements.
59) The Gateway Unified School District in Northern California plans to spend $90,750 in Federal funds to purchase high-tech exercise gaming equipment that seems more at home in an arcade than a school.
60) The Department of Energy (DOE) launched a contest offering $100,000 in prizes for the development of mobile phone apps which would allow users to track their home energy usage. However, these types of apps already exist in the marketplace so this effort would not be satisfying an unfilled market need.
61) The City of Ogdensburg, New York, renovated two area houses using money from the Federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), but then sold them at an enormous loss. This year, the city spent $18,410 for these and other renovations as part of a $250,000 Federal grant used for both improvements to and demolitions of blighted structures,
Renovations of one of the program’s five houses cost $80,000 in total but the city was only able to sell the house for $51,000. Another small house cost $105,000 in federal and state funds to renovate, but was sold for only $42,000.
62) The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded $15,000 in Federal funds for the construction of a gateway arch at the entry point of the Cottage Grove Historic District in Oregon. A picture of the “arch” shows that it is nothing more than a thin, cast iron sign that spans over a single street, certainly not of the St. Louis Arch magnitude.
63) Government investigators have identified the U.S. Department of Labor’s largest Job Corps contractor, Management and Training Corporation (MTC), as a prime case of waste, fraud, and abuse. MTC has been improperly awarding subcontracts to the HIGHEST bidders.
Several of the questioned sub-contracts involved overpaying for medical services. In multiple cases, after soliciting bids for physician and mental services, the highest bids were selected. Lower-priced options were available to choose from and MTC did not obtain required documentation to support choosing the higher-cost option.
64) The State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs sends American professional athletes and coaches all around the world to “conduct drills, lead teambuilding sessions, and engage youth in a dialogue on the importance of education, health, and respect for diversity.” Taxpayers will spend $5.5 million on SportsUnited this year. Note that we are talking highly paid professional athletes from wealthy professional sports organizations, athletes and organizations that should be the source of funding for such travel.
65) A new video game controller being designed with taxpayer dollars might help players catch virtual fish, say researchers at the University of Utah. The new device, which has joysticks that move in response to actions in games, was designed with part of nearly $1.5 million awarded by the National Science Foundation.
66) The American Opportunity Tax Credit was established in the 2009 stimulus package as a way to help people pay for undergraduate education. Eligible taxpayers are able to receive a tax credit of up to $2,500.
An inspector general’s analysis of 2.1 million claims for the credit found 1.7 million filers have received the credit for students even though they provided “no supporting documentation that they attended an educational institution.” Among those improperly receiving the credit were over 63,000 students double-counted as dependents or spouses, 250 prisoners, and 84,754 students who did not have valid Social Security numbers (SSN). The Inspector General said to receive Federal education aid, students generally must have valid SSNs, but for this tax credit, they did not. Unfortunately, the IRS has no effective process in place to identify false claims.
67) The Department of State paid for an American comedy group to make a seven-city tour across India called “Make Chai, Not War.” The full cost to taxpayers was $100,000.
68) An audit program designed to identify overpayments in the Medicaid system costs more than it saves. As it looks for fraud and waste, the Federal government is creating even more, producing a “negative return on investment” for taxpayers.
Since 2005, the National Medicaid Audit Program (NMAP) has cost taxpayers at least $102 million and has only identified $20 million in overpayments. Without significant changes, NMAP will waste over $30 million annually to perform audits. Only a government entity can spend more money looking for wasted money than it recovers. Unbelievable.
69) Officials in one Alabama county used Federal taxpayer dollars to purchase a surveillance system so advanced they cannot even utilize its full capabilities without violating constitutional rights. Alabama officials finished the installation of 196 cameras in three county courthouses using $500,000 from the Department of Justice.
A multi-month investigation into the Constitutional rights issue concluded county officials had no intent to obtain illegal audio recordings when they purchased the equipment.811 However, to avoid pesky constitutionality issues, the courthouse security team has decided to turn off the audio recording features of the system. A cheaper system without audio recording technology would have undoubtedly been a smarter investment and would not have infringed upon the privacy rights of courthouse patrons – or more importantly, our nation’s right to fiscal responsibility.
70) At a cost of several million dollars from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, we now know that male fruit flies are attracted to young females more than to older ones. According to academics funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) their research, published this year, found pheromones – one of the hormones produced in many species, including humans, that causes sexual attractiveness – wane in female fruit flies over time.
71) The city of Providence, Rhode Island has been using part of its Federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) to issue millions of dollars in risky loans. Now 25 percent of the program’s loans, collectively worth $3.4 million, are delinquent the city and is actively trying to collect $1,365,660 from 11 businesses.
72) A Federal income tax credit created to encourage the purchases of electric vehicles will have “little or no impact on the total gasoline use and greenhouse gas emissions of the nation’s vehicle fleet” in coming years, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Through 2019, the credit may cost taxpayers $2 billion, including $74 million this year. So while the new tax credit will increase the deficit, it will most likely do little if anything to decrease emissions.
73) A New Hampshire brewery, Smuttynose, will use $750,970 in Federal funds to construct a new brewery and restaurant on farmland outside of Portsmouth. The taxpayer money will help the brewery purchase three brew tanks and install sewer connections to its 42,000-square-foot facility.
74) Using taxpayer dollars, an academic team developed a dancing robot named Shimi to serve as a disc jockey for smartphones. Shimi “is designed to change the way that people enjoy and think about their music,” said its creator. When a smartphone is connected, Shimi “gains the sensing and musical generation capabilities of the user’s mobile device.”
More than the average robot, Shimi can also “[dance] to the rhythm” of the music. Shaped like a small pet, Shimi shakes its speakers and moves a mechanical foot to groove. The robot’s camera will sense a person’s movement and turn its speakers to face the listener.
And what government entity do you think funded this fiasco? Of course, the National Science Foundation forked over $547,430 of taxpayer wealth to accomplish this dubious invention.
75) Although government agencies will provide over $32 million in 2012 for the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) – a program intended to expand access to healthy foods and fresh produce in some low-income communities, at least two recent academic studies found no relationship between diet and proximity to grocery stores. Policies promoting healthy food access have been tried before and shown to produce few results. A 15-year study of the relationship between food access and obesity rates came to similar conclusions.
76) New Mexico State University, Las Cruces received a $24,995 Federal grant to develop a course titled, “Should we want to be happy?” The curriculum will focus on “the nature, value and means to obtain happiness.” I know what would make me happy? Eliminating expenses like this one that explore what makes other people happy.
77) For every day researchers spent in one of the U.S. Antarctic research centers, government contractors spent nine days working just to support the science studies. Only one in five taxpayer dollars spent on the centers goes directly toward science projects.
A high-level panel’s Federal review of the $300 million U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) found the program needed dramatic reforms to improve the use of taxpayer dollars on the world’s coldest continent. The recommendations drew on each of the panel members’ experience at the Antarctic science centers. They concluded that at least $20 million a year in savings is possible.
78) The USDA awarded a nearly $50,000 Value Added Producer Grant (VAPG) to help New York’s Martin Sidor Farms “revamp their marketing strategy to raise brand awareness and increase sales of their North Fork Potato Chips.” The grant will be used to update the company’s website and brochures, and to engage the services of Slightly Mad Communications, a marketing firm, to boost sales.
79) In 2012, the Modernist Journals Project, a joint venture administered by Brown University and the University of Tulsa, was awarded $270,000 in Federal funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The award was for the creation of “a digital archive of a group of important early 20th-century American periodicals.” The Wastebook questions the need for such an effort since other entities, such as Archive.org, Google Books, and Project Gutenberg, are already doing the same thing WITHOUT taxpayer funding.
80) The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded the Cooper Tire and Rubber Company, a billion dollar company, nearly $7 million for the development of natural rubber tires using guayule.
Guayale is a plant native to the American Southwest and Mexico, with a long history as a natural rubber alternative. Cooper Tire will work with academic and government researchers and the Yulex Corporation, a developer of natural rubber products including condoms, latex free gloves, and other medical supplies.
Given that another tire company, Bridgestone, is already doing extensive research into Guayale WITHOUT taxpayer funding, it brings into question why we are paying Cooper Tire to do the same thing.
81) There are 78 structurally deficient bridges in Iowa, yet the state is spending thousands of dollars of Federal transportation funds to pave the way for a sculpture garden rather than fixing the state’s bridges. The sculpture garden will be located in the town of Waterloo, Iowa, and will be dedicated to former resident Lou Henry Hoover, the wife of 31st U.S. President Herbert Hoover.
The town recently added a statue of Mrs. Hoover “on the corner of West Fourth and Washington, the former site of Hoovers’ home,” which will be relocated within the park. This existing bronze statue completed in 2004, shows “Hoover as a child with her dog back-to-back with her adult image.” A new bronze statue of Mrs. Hoover will be added.
The garden will feature the various sculptures of the first lady as well as landscaping and sidewalk enhancements, paid for in part with $145,000 of Federal transportation enhancement funds.
82) The National Endowment for the Arts gave $50,000 to fund the 9th Annual Games for Change Festival, a conference focused on “the creation and distribution of social impact games that serve as critical tools in humanitarian and educational efforts.” One featured game, Zombie Yoga, “uses Yoga and visualization to empower the player emotionally.”918 Another game puts players through life situations that would increase someone’s risk for HIV.
83) The U.S. Department of Commerce provided $1 million to Ogden City, Utah, to create a “Mobile App Lab.” The “lab” will include a “code shop operated by the Weber State University Research Foundation, a training center, and office space from high-tech start-ups.” Some hope the lab will “inspire entrepreneurs to get creative in their application development.”
84) The Port of Los Angeles will be spending nearly half a million dollars in energy efficiency funds to upgrade its tour yacht’s engines. The Port uses the 73-foot Angelena II to provide tours, lasting 60 to 90 minutes, of the Port of Los Angeles facilities for up to forty guests. The yacht provides several hundred tours a year “to highlight the capabilities of the Port facilities to customers, constituents, public leaders, foreign dignitaries, media and stakeholders.”
That is the official objective of the yacht. However, two years of the ship’s log show guests included screenwriters from Universal Studios, members of the exclusive Jonathan Club, and dozens of the mayor’s interns.
85) Although many readers are increasingly going high tech, switching from paperbacks and hard cover books to e-books that can be read on Kindles and Nooks, the Fullerton Public Library in California is going a different direction, spending thousands of dollars to install a vending-style book machine at a train station just blocks from the library.
The book machine is intended to provide more convenient access to books for commuters. The Fullerton Public Library used “a $35,000 Federal grant to install the machine, which will include a drop box for returns and a selection of about 500 books for checking out. Talk about going backwards while the world is going forward, a typical government behavior.
86) The Alabama Watermelon Queen went on a tour this year with some financial assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The state allocated $25,000 in Federal funds to the Alabama Watermelon Association “to promote Alabama’s watermelon industry through appearances of the Alabama Watermelon Queen at various events and locations."
87) Researchers believe they have found another means to help our memories as we age: the “World of Warcraft,” a fantasy video game featuring characters like orcs, trolls, and warlocks. A team of researchers used part of $1.2 million in grants from the National Science Foundation (Again!!!) to continue a video game study this year to see if playing “World Of Warcraft” can improve our memories.
88) As recently as October 2012, a Federally funded program to help facilitate the sale of nearly 9,000 homes abandoned after Hurricane Katrina was still holding over 3,000 homes. Over $21.6 million was spent in the last year to maintain the homes and administer the program, with $5.8 million remaining. Since the program’s creation, the Federal cost has been over $200 million, much of it coming through the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
89) In the name of increasing access to healthy food, healthy food vending machines costing $11,000 each, total cost over $612,000, are being installed in schools throughout Miami-Dade County. The machines are stocked with healthy lunch options such as wraps, salads, and fruit and yogurt parfaits. While the machines may be cool, there are more cost-effective ways to provide these healthy options to students, such as serving them from the regular cafeteria counters.
So why use the vending machines at all? “Students are very tech-savvy and love to text, punch in numbers and get things quickly,” one school official explained. Wow, he convinced me that this is a good reason to spend over half a million dollars when cheaper options are available
90) In spite of the robust demand for alcoholic beverages, the U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded a $99,000 grant to the new Clayton Distillery Company – a New York distillery – in 2012. The distillery hopes to get off the ground and start producing beverages by the end of the year. Using taxpayer money, owners plan to buy a copper still and stainless steel vodka column. The distillery believes the grant will cover two-thirds of the equipment cost.
91) With $21,000 from the Pentagon, the 100-Year Starship organization hosted a September symposium for interstellar discussion. The focus of the gathering was to discuss how to get a manned spaceship to a planet in another solar system within the next century – a goal described as “most grandiose … at a time when only two nations – neither of them the United States, at least currently – can send humans into space.”
92) Thirty-thousand Lego pieces, paid for with a $3,700 National Scenic Byways grant, are being assembled to build a miniature replica of a historic downtown street in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The 18-foot-long display will depict Queen Street as it likely appeared in the 1920s and ‘30s. It is expected to be a permanent exhibit at the “for the kids, by George” Children’s Museum, which will showcase George Washington’s “adventures in the Eastern Panhandle” of West Virginia. The museum is primarily funded with a $290,000 National Scenic Byways grant awarded by the Federal Highway Administration.
93) For years, the General Services Administration (GSA) has been awarding contracts to thousands of companies for outdated products like typewriters, trophies, photographic equipment, and commemorative items, even though most of the contracts produce little or no sales. The agency has not previously taken the time to determine which contracts it no longer should maintain.
The GSA is now planning to eliminate contracts for unused products and hopes “directing scarce acquisition resources away from the more than 8,000 obsolete contracts – which each cost at least $3,000 per year to administer – will streamline the schedule process and save more than $24 million a year.”
94) The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is funding over half a million dollars in summer stipends for scholars and teachers to examine a variety of projects, a large number of which range from the irrelevant to the bizarre:
- Kalamazoo College received $6,000 in summer stipends to study “Priests and Concubines in England, 1375-1559.”It will “examine both cultural perceptions of clerical concubinage and the lived experiences of priests, concubines, and their children in late medieval England.”
- At Ohio University, a professor used $6,000 for her scholastic inquest into romantic literature and suicide in Britain.
- $6,000 was spent for a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor to lead a project titled “Music in the Films of Robert Altman: From M*A*S*H to A Prairie Home Companion.”
- Another $6,000 was awarded to the University of Utah to lead a project titled “The Mother Goose Translation Project.”
96) The Idaho Firearms and Accessories Manufacturers Association (IFAMA) received $25,000 in taxpayer funds to study the economic success of the Idaho gun industry. The group said it also spent part of taxpayers’ money on what amounted to a gun show.
97) The Small Business Administration in 2012 arranged over $2.0 million in loan guarantees for ten cupcake shops across the country. Taxpayers are on the hook for the loans if the businesses fail.
98) Not surprisingly, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $1.3 million for a study to test “the user experience, WiFi, 3G, and 4G performance, and even the performance of the operating system.”
Using taxpayer dollars, researchers will give 200 students new Samsung Nexus S phones running Google’s Android. The phones will come with one year of free, unlimited service from Sprint, who is donating the service to the study. After the one-year period ends, the students will pay a discounted rate of $44 per month.
Students are supposed to use the free devices as their primary phones, and they will participate in a few hours of cell phone experiments monthly. Some of the experiments will be interactive, such as downloading apps and using them during the experiment.
While advancing cell phone technology and development may be helpful to consumers, research is better funded by private industry, which will be the primary beneficiary from future successes. More cheap corporate welfare at the taxpayers’ expense.
99) A motorsports museum showcasing the “rich agricultural and motorsports history” in Kossuth County, Iowa, “through the display of key pieces of farm equipment, farm tools, and racing displays” was approved for a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant in June.
The Kossuth County Agricultural & Motorsports Museum will be built at the county fairgrounds. “When completed, the museum will contain tributes to agricultural history in Kossuth County, a tribute to the history of dirt track racing in the area, and also a large toy train display.”
The $300,000 USDA grant will “help finance the construction” of the museum. Do our children have this money to spare?
100) In 2009, the United States Postal Service (USPS) printed one billion stamps commemorating one of television’s most well-known families, the Simpsons. Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie each received their own portrait.
Sales were far below USPS’ expectations, leaving managers to perhaps say “D’Oh!” In their first two years, only 318 million Simpsons stamps sold. This move alone wasted $1.2 million.1072 “Nearly twice as many Simpsons stamps were printed than the most popular commemorative ever issued,” according to the IG. An Elvis stamp issued in 1993 was the agency’s most popular at 517 million sold. I guess no one bothered to check history or to produce the Simpsons as they were needed, not all at once.
Disgraceful. This is what our politicians work on and worry about but they have been unable to fulfill their Constitutional responsibility to put together an annual Federal budget, something they have not done for over three years.
The follwing steps would certinaly be good first steps to getting this insanity under control:
- Step 1 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for five years. The theory of this step is that if you gradually reduce the budget of a government agency by 50% but still hold them accountable for their duties, these types of wasteful spending would vanish as the dollars to fund them vanished.
- Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would impose term limits on all Federal politicians, "one and done." Most of the current Washington politicians have been around for ten or more years. They created this mess of wasteful spending, they are unlikly, unable, or unwilling to fix it. Time to replace them with people who actually care about the country's financial status and future.
- Step 44 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would not allow any Federal taxpayer money be spent on any project unless that project significantly impacted the lives of a substantial number of residents of at least five states. Federal tax money should be spent on national programs and projects. State, local, and volunteer money should be spent on local projects.
- And finally, Step 34 would remove any politician from any Congressional committee post that was not doing its job. In this case, any politiccian sitting on the House and Senate budget committees would be removed since they have gone three years without creating a budget, the primary function of their committees. Until we start holding politicians accountable for their performance, their performance will continue to stink.
There you have it, 100 examples of why our national debt is out of control. 100 reasons why no American, rich or poor, should spend another dime in taxes until the political class proves they are worthy of managing our wealth. With these 100 examples, it is pretty obvious they are not worthy.
The really sad part of all this is that we have not shared with you the overriding reason for this dismal financial management performance, as identified by the Senator. We will cover this overriding reason tomorrow.
We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:
http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/
The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.
The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.
Our 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.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/
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