We often use the analogy that entities like the U.S. Federal government have degenerated into the Star Wars character, Jabba the Hutt. Jabba is an overweight, over bearing, oppressive figure that constantly uses up resources, terrorizes all those he comes in contact with, and generally never accomplishes anything worthwhile. A better description of the ineffectiveness of today’s politicians does not come to mind.
Consider the major issues of our times and how the politicians in Washington, and elsewhere, have been complete failures in finding solutions to those problems, problems that have plagued Americans for decades:
- Despite spending tens of trillions of dollars since the 1960s, Washington’s war on poverty has not eliminated poverty and, depending on how your measure poverty, may have actually made it worse.
- Despite the oil shocks and the recessions those shocks caused in the 1970s, we still do not have a strategic and comprehensive national energy plan.
- Our war on drugs is over 40 years old and the only things it has accomplished is to fill our jails with low level drug users and dealers, cost us trillions of dollars without reducing drug usage, and created some of the most violent and wealthy criminal cartels ever.
- Our escalating and high health care costs in this country continue to get higher and higher despite an over 2,000 page piece of legislation, Obama Care, that is making health care insurance costs higher, health care quality lower, and endangering the lives of millions of Americans.
- Social Security - going bankrupt
- Medicare and Medicaid - going bankrupt
- Veterans Administration - so inefficient and corrupt that it is killing our veterans through neglect and bureaucracy.
- IRS - readily admits that it fails to collect almost $400 billion in owed taxes each year why it fails to admit it has become a political tool of the current administration in stifling dissent and free speech.
- Department of Defense - so screwed up that even its auditors gave up trying to get out of control spending and corruption under control.
- Border Security - given that we are home to over 10 million illegal immigrants, enough said.
Three steps in particular from our book would point us in that direction:
- Step 1 would reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for five years in order to not only balance the budget but force Washington politicians to really prioritize and work on only the most important issues since they would not have the budget to work on the trivial any more.
- Step 34 would hold Congressional committee members actually responsible for the work and oversight duties of their committees. If they failed at their oversight job and allowed government spending and behavior to be less than satisfactory, they would lose their positions on those committees that under perform their oversight job.
- Step 37 would allow the country to grade politicians work output and performance every year and tie their pay checks to that performance rating.
Do fewer things but do them better should be the strategy. To really drive home this point, consider some work that was done several years ago the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards. He went back through time and looked at dozens and dozens of government projects, comparing the final cost of each project against what the original promised and budgeted costs were.
His results are very sad but not surprising. Cost overruns are always the menu of the day, the Washington politicians are incapable of doing anything on schedule and on cost. And we are not talking about going 5-10% over budget. Many of the project researched by Mr. Edwards were orders of magnitude over budget.
But nobody was held accountable, no one was called on the carpet to explained what went wrong. The bureaucrats overspend and the Congressional oversight committees never crack down. These are just dozens of reasons why we need the steps listed above to reduce government size but increase government effectiveness.
Consider some of the bigger screw ups by the Federal workforce and the Congressional people in charge:
- The Federal Department of Energy's (DOE) wanted to clean up radioactive waste at its nuclear facilities. In trying to do so, the General Accountability Office noted: "DOE's efforts to treat and dispose of high-level waste have been plagued with false starts and failures." The GAO estimates that the total estimated costs of DOE's clean-ups jumped from $63 billion in 1996 to $105 billion in 2003, an increase over budget of 67%.
- In 1993, Congress approved construction of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) to research nuclear fusion. The NIF is supposed to focus 200 high-power lasers at a small point to generate a big release of energy. Unfortunately, the project is at least seven years behind schedule, and the total estimated cost has ballooned from $2.1 billion to $4.2 billion, a 100% forecast miss.
- The FutureGen project was started in 2003 by President Bush with an objective of building a low-emission coal power plant and demonstrating carbon capture technologies. The project was budgeted at $1 billion, but the cost has increased to at least $1.8 billion and it is still not complete.
- The so-called Big Dig road and tunnel project in Boston was one of the worst offenders relative to poor budgeting. Originally budgeted at a couple of billions of dollars, the final Federal government cost came in at over $14 billion. Even with that overage in budget, the final product ended up having hundreds of leaks in the project's tunnels after it was completed, and one of tunnel ceiling panels collapsed, killing a passing motorist.
- The Wall Street Journal reported that the program to develop a new Presidential helicopter was also in a shambles from a budgeting perspective. The program initially called for about $6.1 billion in spending to develop and build the next generation of so-called Marine One choppers. However, the expected cost of the program has now an estimated $11.2 billion, almost twice as much as originally forecasted.
- In 2008, the GAO did an analysis and review of the costs and schedules of 72 weapons programs. It found that the average cost overrun for development of the systems was a whopping 40%.
- A new Capitol Visitor Center jumped up in cost from an estimated $265 million in 2000 to $621 million when it was completed in 2008, a more than doubling of the original cost estimate.
- The Kennedy Center in DC recently got a parking lot retrofit. That project tripled in cost as it was being completed.
- In the stampede rush to hire more airport screeners in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) put forth an initial job recruiting contract for $104 million. Unbelievably, the cost final cost rose more than sevenfold to $741 million. The Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security found that the TSA did virtually no planning for the effort and it ignored warnings that project costs were far exceeding the approved budget. No wonder the costs went up so much.
- Bad budgeting and/or dishonesty pervades just about every part of government. When Medicare Part A was enacted in 1965, annual costs were expected to rise to $9 billion by 1990. However, the actual costs were $67 billion that year, almost eight times higher.
- When home care benefits were added to Medicare in 1988, they were expected to cost $4 billion by 1993. They ended up being $10 billion a year.
- When the 1996 farm law was passed, subsidies were expected to cost $47 billion in total between 1996 to 2002, but they ended up costing $121 billion, almost three times miss of the forecasted costs.
You get the idea. This massive incompetence, lack of accoountability, lack of awareness, and plain old bureaucracy parading as worthwhile Federal government projects. And I bet not a single Federal worker, executive or member of Congress was ever punished for this incompetence and wasting of taxpayer money.
If these cost overruns had happened in the private sector, many jobs and careers would have been ended as a result of such ineptness. In government work, we just get the American taxpayer to ante up more of their hard earned wealth.
Just these few examples show how out of touch and inane some of our politicians are. Last year during the sequester debates, Nancy Pelosi publicly decried there is nothing left to cut in the Federal budget and that the sequester cost reductions would be devastating. Given the above real life examples of government incompetence, her ranting makes her look all the more foolish.
That is why the three steps above, plus one more, need to be implemented so that these examples of gross mismanagement and waste never happen again:
- Step 1 - reduce government spending by 10% a year for five years so that Washington politicians have less money to waste.
- Step 34 - force Washington Congressional people to give up their committee seats when the government functions they are supposed to be overseeing fail so miserably at delivering on time and on budget results.
- Step 37 - pay for performance for Washington politicians. If they allow government entities to waste our money, they should get less money for being so negligent in their duties.
- Step 39 - institute term limits for all Washington politicians so that they do not become complacent in their duties and hopefully, actually oversee the parts of the government they are responsible for overseeing and directing. We include this step here also since it is pretty obvious that staying with the current set of incumbent politicians in office in Washington is not going to solve the problem since they were in office when these cost overrun problems occurred.
The first step in term limits starts here:
But we should not be surprised by all of these government cost overruns. Former San Francisco mayor, Willie Brown, once explained how politicians work when it comes to budgeting. While his insights are depressing, it does shine a light on how taxpayers always get screwed when politicians budget:
“News that the Transbay Terminal is something like $300 million over budget should not come as a shock to anyone.”
We always knew the initial estimate was way under the real cost. Just like we never had a real cost for the Central Subway or the Bay Bridge or any other massive construction project. So get off it.
In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved.[my emphasis]
The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.”
Disgraceful but true. Lies, all lies.
Although we listed a handful of atrocious budget examples above, they are just a very small sub-sample of government incompetence. Cato’s Chris Edwards work highlighted dozens of other affronts to the American taxpayer and they are listed below. The first number listed after each project is the original cost estimate and the second number is the actual, final cost result along with the year of each event.
Boston Big Dig highway project: $2.6b (1985), $14.6b (2005)
Virginia Springfield interchange: $241m (1994), $676m (2003)
Denver International Airport : $1.7b (1989), $4.8b (1995)
Hiring of airport security screeners: $104m (2002), $741m (2006)
Airport security technology upgrade: $1b (2002), $3b (2005)
Hanford nuclear waste clean-up: $4.3b (2000), $12.2b (2008)
All nuclear waste sites clean-up: $63b (1996), $105b (2003)
National Ignition Facility: $2.1b (1995). $4.2b (2000)
Clinch River Breeder Reactor: $400m (1971), $4b (1983)
Superconducting Supercollider: $4.4b (1987), $11.8b (1993)
FutureGen clean coal project: $1b (2003), $1.8b (2008)
Global Hawk surveillance plane: $989m (2001), $3.7b (2007)
Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle: $1.6b (2000), $3.6b (2007)
C-130J Hercules: $10.9m (1996), $430.3m (2007)
Extended Range Munitions: $86.9m (1997), $500.1m (2007)
DDG 1000 destroyer: $2.2b (1998), $9.3b (2006)
V-22 Osprey helicopter: $4.0b (1986), $12.5b (2006)
Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter: $388.3m (2005), $750.9 (2007)
Space Based Infrared System High: $4.2b (1996), $8.5b (2006)
Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter: $388.3m (2005), $750.9 (2007)
NPOESS Satellite System: $5.0b (2002), $7.9b (2007
Coastal Patrol Ships: $220m (2004), $350m (2007)
Joint Strike Fighter: $232b (2001), $337b (2008)
Marine One (VH-71) helicopters: $6.1b (2005). $11.2b (2008)
Coast Guard, NSC ships, per unit: $250m (2002), $536m (2007)
Air traffic control modernization: $8.9b (1998), $14.6b (2005)
FBI Trilogy computer system: $477m (2000), $600m (2004)
Pentagon airborne laser system: $1b (1996), $2b (2004)
Border radiation detectors: $2.1b (2008), $3.1b (2008
International Space Station: $17b (1997), $30b (2001)
Mars Science Laboratory: $1.6b (2008), $2.3b (2009)
Glory satellite: $266m (2008), $348m (2008
Capitol Visitor Center: $265m (2000), $621m (2008)
Kennedy Center opera house: $18.3m (1995), $22.2m (2003)
Kennedy Center concert hall: $15.1m (1995), $21.3m (1997)
Kennedy Center parking lot: $28m (1998), $88m (2003)
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:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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