The Democrats in the Senate, who have controlled the Senate for four years, recently came up with their first real budget since April, 2009. Rather than cleaning up the Washington wasteful spending addiction, they want to feed the addiction by taxing Americans and America to the tune of an incremental one TRILLION dollars over the next ten years.
Rather than stopping the skyrocketing national debt and the wasteful spending that causes future generations of Americans to be burdened with high debt levels, they want to spend an incremental one TRILLION dollars over the next ten years.
Disgraceful insanity, wasteful spending, despicable leadership. The following 25 wasteful spending examples were compiled at the following website of the Independent Journal Review, a website that can be accessed directly in order to find the sources of these examples of waste:
http://www.ijreview.com/2013/03/44144-countdown-to-bankruptcy-25-most-insane-stories-on-wasteful-spending/25/
While we cannot vouch for the integrity of all 25 examples, we have previously discussed a number of them. At those times, we had verified that they were actual, if stupid, government programs and associated stupid spending. Given that the website cites and links to all their sources, I would assume that most, if not all of them, are real.
Now, eliminating these 25 examples of waste would not give Americans tax relief, curb our national debt, or balance the budget. But remember that these types of expense are repeated thousands of times over every day, week, month, and year within the Federal government. These millions of dollars listed below in this very small sample of government gone wild probably represents billions and billions of dollars that the total Federal bureaucracy wastes every month.
Thus, I present another 25 idiotic wastes of your tax payments. After the list, we provide some simple advice on how to get the under budget idiocy in Washington under control before it overwhelms our wealth, our democracy, and our freedom.
25. Pet Shampoo - $505,000 Sergeant's Pet Care Products received half a million dollars in Community Development Block Grants provided by HUD. [Fiscal Times]
24. Snowmobile Competition - $45,900 Grant is allotted for an annual snowmobile competition in Michigan. [Fox]
23. Elvis Cruises - $308,000 Estimated price for an Elvis music boat funded by federal government. [Examiner]
22. Puppet Choreography - $1.18 million Taxpayer money for puppets discovered at USA.GOV. [Breitbart.com]
21. Star Trek Training Video for IRS - $60,000 Along with a Gilligan's Island version, almost totals four weeks of White House tours. [AP]
20. Sports Diplomacy - $5 Million U.S State Department spends $5 million a year on the PR program. [US Public Diplomacy]
19. Shrimp Treadmill - $515,468 A National Science Foundation-funded study examines how shrimp scamper. [Fox]
18. Ukrainian Easter Egg Workshop - Part of $8.1 Million Grant Heritage Areas receives an $8.1 million grant and partly funds the Ukrainian egg crafts workshop. [Daily Caller]
17. Circus Training - $20,000 National Endowment of the Arts has spent $84,000 over last four years funding the Circus Day Foundation. [Fiscal Times]
16. Eat More Caviar - $30,000 PR program pushes Americans to eat more fancy fish eggs. [Fiscal Times]
15. Robotic Bees - Harvard has received over $9.3 million from the Feds since 2010 to fund robotic insects. [Fox]
14. Meditation for Math & Science Students - $349,862 Money doled out so students can zone out. [Fox]
13. Tribal Casinos - Hundreds of Thousands FBI is investigating how much of $4.5 million given to Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation went to Foxwoods casino. [AP]
12. Smuttynose Brewery - $750,970 Taxpayer money doled out to brewer. [Fiscal Times]
11. Wineries and Vineyards - $1.5 Million Just cutting this one subsidy alone would fund White House tours for a year. [Wastebook 2012]
10. Cowboy Poetry - $50,000 The Cowboy Poetry festival to be held in April 2013 would receive taxpayer money, according to Senator Pat Toomey. [Daily Caller]
9. Beef Jerky - $639,884 Pentagon spends this on developing rolled-up beef jerky that is already on the market. [Fiscal Times]
8. Faith-based Gardens - $389,319 CNS News reported today that low-income families get money to plant gardens.
7. Moroccan Pottery - $27 Million Moroccan pottery is a "key" part of a USAID program to improve Morocco's economic competitiveness. [Fiscal Times]
6. Martian Pizza - $947,000 NASA spends about $1 million annually “researching and building the Mars menu.” Last year, it was vegan pizza - for astronauts on low-protein diets. [Hawaii Free Press]
5. Criminals Petting Wild Horses - $2 Million Bureau of Land Management set aside as much as $2 million so convicted criminals can teach wild horses and burros to be gentle. [CNS]
4. Snail Sex - $880,000 "The National Science Foundation awarded a grant for $876,752 to the University of Iowa to study whether there is any benefit to sex among New Zealand mud snails." [CNS]
3. Prom Video Game - $500,000 "$500,000 government video game about high school proms is used to teach social skills." [The Hill]
2. Robo-Squirrel - $325,000 "Researchers at San Diego State University used funds from a $325,000 grant provided by the government-bankrolled NSF to invent a robotic squirrel." Robo-squirrel is still fighting rattlesnakes. [Fox]
1. Joe Biden's Expenses - Millions and counting... Vice President Biden’s trip to a Parisian Five-Star Hotel in February cost $585,000. Biden's stay in London with an entourage cost $459,338. His limo service cost $321,665. He often flies home to Delaware from Washington at a trip cost of $8,800 an hour.
Two simple ways to get this under control:
1) Step 44 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would prevent the Federal government from spending any Federal tax dollars any program or project that does not significantly impact a substantial number of citizens in at least five states. If this principle was applied to the above 25 expenditures, none of them would survive since the increased knowledge in New Zealand snail sex or shrimp jogging would not impact a substantial amount of citizens in at least five states.
2) The second step to curbing this nonsense would be to implement that National Bounty System that we proposed in the following post:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/05/national-bounty-system-fixing.html
This process would "deputize" citizens and Federal government workers, the quest to stamp out waste, providing financial incentives and rewards for doing so. Senator Rand Paul has recently proposed such a process for Federal employees. I believe that if much of this wasteful spending had to stand up to the light of public disclosure and discussion it would wilt away.
These types of actions would help clean up the "one time" idiotic spending of Washington, waste similar to the above 25 examples.
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.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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