Government Waste Lets Do Something
2009 Federal Financial Audit GAO-10-483T Largest-ever FEDERAL PAYROLL to hit 2.15 million - Washington Times 2-2-10 READ FULL ARTICLE Washington Times Yahoo News! States consider drug tests for welfare recipients AP By TOM BREEN Associated Press Writer Tom Breen, Thu Mar 26, 9:28 am ET Full article Yahoo News Excerpts: CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Want government assistance? Just say no to drugs. Lawmakers in at least eight states want recipients of food stamps, unemployment benefits or welfare to submit to random drug testing. The effort comes as more Americans turn to these safety nets to ride out the recession. Poverty and civil liberties advocates fear the strategy could backfire, discouraging some people from seeking financial aid and making already desperate situations worse. Those in favor of the drug tests say they are motivated out of a concern for their constituents' health and ability to put themselves on more solid financial footing once the economy rebounds. But proponents concede they also want to send a message: you don't get something for nothing. Wall Street Journal How Government Prolonged the Depression Policies that decreased competition in product and labor markets were especially destructive. By HAROLD L. COLE and LEE E. OHANIAN Full article HAROLD L. COLE and LEE E. OHANIAN Wall Street Journal Excerpts: The New Deal is widely perceived to have ended the Great Depression, and this has led many to support a "new" New Deal to address the current crisis. But the facts do not support the perception that FDR's policies shortened the Depression, or that similar policies will pull our nation out of its current economic downturn.[Commentary] Corbis A man selling apples during the Great Depression. The goal of the New Deal was to get Americans back to work. But the New Deal didn't restore employment. In fact, there was even less work on average during the New Deal than before FDR took office. Total hours worked per adult, including government employees, were 18% below their 1929 level between 1930-32, but were 23% lower on average during the New Deal (1933-39). Private hours worked were even lower after FDR took office, averaging 27% below their 1929 level, compared to 18% lower between in 1930-32. Even comparing hours worked at the end of 1930s to those at the beginning of FDR's presidency doesn't paint a picture of recovery. Total hours worked per adult in 1939 remained about 21% below their 1929 level, compared to a decline of 27% in 1933. And it wasn't just work that remained scarce during the New Deal. Per capita consumption did not recover at all, remaining 25% below its trend level throughout the New Deal, and per-capita nonresidential investment averaged about 60% below trend. The Great Depression clearly continued long after FDR took office. US NEWS&WORLD REPORT Michael Barone Paulson, Bernanke, and Congress on the Bailout: Incompetence All Around November 19, 2008 03:48 PM ET Full article Michael Barone US NEWS&WORLD REPORT Excerpts: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke got beaten up pretty badly in the House Financial Services Committee yesterday. And on at least one point, I think, justifiably so. In his opening statement, Paulson acknowledged that at the time the Senate passed its version of the financial rescue package October 1 and the House passed the same version October 3, he had already decided that the Treasury Department would not embark on the program of acquiring toxic securitized mortgage and other paper from financial institutions, as he was telling Congress it would, and that it would instead use powers in the bill to inject capital into banks and other financial institutions. Government Waste I think members of Congress have standing to complain when they are asked to approve a piece of legislation on the grounds that the administration will do A, but in fact the administration has already decided to use the broad powers in the bill to do B—and hasn't told Congress about its change of mind. Paulson in his opening statement hit back at that by noting that in the two weeks Congress had been considering the legislation—from September 19, when Paulson and Bernanke presented their three-page rescue package outline to members of Congress, until October 3, when Congress passed the bill—the stock market fell 9 percent. In effect, he's blaming Congress for dithering while $2 trillion of wealth was being destroyed. He's got an argument, too. I think there's something to be said for both sides, as well as against. Congress acted pretty darn quickly by its standards in voting to give the secretary of the treasury powers to deploy $700 billion pretty much as he wished.
There was some negligence on the part of Congress, including members of both parties. When Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on September 23 that she wanted 100 House Republicans to support the bill, all the folks concerned—Paulson and the administration, the House Democratic and Republican leadership, the bipartisan leaders in the Senate supporting the rescue package—should have brought the House Republicans (previously ignored, since Democrats can pass pretty much anything they want in the House under its rules and Pelosi's strong party discipline) into the negotiations. Government Waste This didn't happen immediately, resulting in the defeat of the rescue package in the House September 29 (when plenty of Democrats with safe seats as well as Republicans voted against it: no party discipline from the Democratic leadership here). The House Republicans got some concessions in the Senate bill (no money for Acorn, etc.), passed in the Senate October 1 and in the House (where the Democratic leadership had lost negotiating leverage) October 3. Incompetence all around. The general practice when you have a closely divided Senate and a controlled House is to have the Senate pass a bipartisan measure and the House a leadership measure, and then resolve them in conference. But when the speaker announces she must have bipartisan support (in this case so that politically marginal members of her party can vote against the measure), then the House minority must be brought into the discussions. Suddenly, the House minority, which ordinarily has no leverage to produce legislative results, has a great deal—a concession Pelosi in effect made on September 23. But she did not bring in the House Republicans, nor did the House Republican leadership authorize anyone (including Spencer Bachus, ranking minority member on Financial Services) to negotiate for them. October 16, 2008 An Open Letter to the Presidential Candidates: Want to Cut Waste? Here's How! Full article National Taxpayers Union Excerpts: Dear Senators McCain and Obama: In your series of Presidential debates, you have both expressed support for the idea of going through the budget "line by line" in order to root out waste and inefficiency. As watchdog organizations dedicated to the elimination of wasteful spending, the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) and the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) have spent years doing exactly that. Both of our organizations maintain extensive lists of programs that could be cut or legislation that would reduce spending. We target programs that are either ineffective or duplicative, or activities best left to state and local governments or the private sector. NTU's research arm, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, through its BillTally program has compiled a list of pieces of legislation in the current Congress that would reduce spending, including examples like H.R. 5957, which would eliminate $35 billion worth of agricultural subsidies over five years. NTUF also holds a list of 2,150 spending cut bills introduced in the last nine Congresses that totaled over $9.5 trillion, only 69 of which were eventually signed into law for a savings of $89.6 billion. NTU also reviews data from the Administration's Program Assessment Rating Tool, which found that there were nearly 220 programs in 2007 that were ineffective or did not demonstrate results. This research is available from NTU staff or at http://www.ntu.org/downloads/BT110_SavingsBills.xls. The report below highlights the fact that $55 billion dollars in checks, were sent out improperly. The report does not seem to mention that much or most of this is due to fraud, but it seems possible this is the dominant factor. GAO-Government Accountability Office GAO-08-438T  Custom Search United States Government Accountability Office Page i GAO Before the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security, Committee on Homeland Security ...http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08438t.pdf - Reports & TestimoniesBackground: The federal government is accountable for how its agencies and grantees spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and is responsible for safeguarding those funds against improper payments and recouping those funds when improper payments occur. The Congress enacted the Improper Payments Information Act of 2002 (IPIA) and section 831 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002, commonly known as the Recovery Auditing Act, to address these issues. GAO was asked to testify on agencies' efforts to eliminate and recover improper payments. Specifically, GAO focused on (1) progress made in agencies' implementation and reporting under IPIA for fiscal year 2007, (2) major ... WALL STREET JOURNAL By PAT TOOMEY Full article WSJ Excerpts: Government Waste The Club for Growth Political Action Committee has long been attacked for intervening in Republican primaries and targeting the party's most economically liberal incumbents. In 2000, Pennsylvania Rep. Jim Greenwood called the Club "cannibals." When the Club ran ads against Ohio Sen. George Voinovich and Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe for resisting President Bush's 2003 tax cut, Karl Rove deemed the ads "counterproductive." And Newt Gingrich, the man who ushered in a conservative Republican majority in 1994, once denounced the Club. "Their strategy is explicitly wrong," he said. "The key is to elect more Republicans and have a bigger majority and be more inclusive." TOWNHOUSE.COM A Government Engineered Food Crisis By Linda Chavez March 28,2008 Full article Linda Chavez Townhouse.com Excerpts: As if a housing crisis, rising energy costs and a soft labor market weren't enough to cause economic anxiety for the average American, now consumers are feeling the pinch of rapidly escalating food costs. The United States has long prided itself in being the breadbasket of the world, and Americans have traditionally paid a smaller share of their income on food than citizens of other developed countries. But the days of cheap milk, bread, beef and poultry may well be over -- and Uncle Sam is partly to blame. In 2007, the cost of a gallon of milk increased 26 percent; eggs went up 40 percent; and a loaf of white bread went from $1.05 to $1.28 from 2006 to 2008. Steep increases in the price of oil have contributed to these higher costs, but the federal government has played a pernicious role as well. Government Waste By mandating that oil companies increase the amount of ethanol they blend with gasoline, the government has not only artificially increased the cost of corn, which is what most U.S. ethanol is made of, but has driven up the cost of other grains as well. Inflated corn prices encourage farmers to divert more acreage to corn, which means they plant less soy and wheat, which, in turn, drives the prices of those commodities up as well. The aggregate price of wheat, corn, soy oil and soy meal in the U.S. will be $61.7 billion higher in the 2007/2008 crop year than it was in 2005/2006. From: James Joyner Outside The Beltway Excerpts: Full Article Below Senior government employees spent a nominal amount of money upgrading official flights from coach, the GAO has found. Federal employees wasted at least $146 million over a one-year period on business- and first-class airline tickets, in some cases simply because they felt entitled to the perk, congressional investigators say. A draft report by the Government Accountability Office, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, is the first to examine compliance with travel rules across the federal government following reports of extensive abuse of premium-class travel by Pentagon and State Department employees. The review of travel spending by more than a dozen agencies from July 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006, found 67 percent of premium-class travel by executives or their employees, worth at least $146 million, was unauthorized or otherwise unjustified. Among the worst offenders: the State Department, whose employees typically fly abroad on official business. Center for a Just Society Big Government is the Enemy of Freedom Let's face it. Americans love things that are big. We love big houses, big cars, and Big Gulps. We supersize our meals, our TV sets and even our golf clubs (Big Bertha has revolutionized the game of many a duffer). Athletes take steroids to make themselves bigger, and people who are not satisfied with their natural endowments resort to surgery to bolster their appeal. After all, in America, size matters. Regrettably, however, our love affair with all things big appears to extend to government. Government spending relative to GDP has grown dramatically in the past century—from 5.5% to 28.9%. Government Waste Federal deficits have risen from $50.7 billion in 1940 to an estimated $9.3 trillion in 2007. In the past decade, total state spending increased a whopping 88%, from $628,634,000,000 to $1,184,146,000,000. Clearly, the era of big government is back. When it comes to government, however, smaller is better than bigger and you get more with less. More what? More freedom.
Each Year Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) presents its Pig Book showing the multi billions wasted on pork projects and which congressmen/woman got the money for their district. WATCH THE VIDEO Government Waste represents a danger to the future of the United States. Waste is a growing problem. We have let this problem fester for far too long. Government Waste The feds, alone, now take about 20% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product). GDP is essentially all the goods and services produced by everyone in the labor force. The feds, before FDR, took only 3% plus of GDP, that’s three percent. Milton Friedman, probably the world’s most respected economist, testified in the 1990’s that the national budget should be less than half of what it is each year, to still fulfill federal needs. Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), a government watchdog group rates congressmen and each year lists all waste by Congress. This group was formed in 1984 by business man J. Peter Grace, a lifelong Democrat and famous reporter Jack Anderson who passed away several months ago. The 2006 improper payment number was $41 billion. Since then CAGW has been a tireless watchdog for taxpayers. However, citizens must become much more involved in controlling the spending appetite of most congressmen. Congressmen get themselves reelected year after year by making taxpayers think they are getting something for nothing. It a is very costly to those who actually pay. Americans practically always solve problems when the problem becomes too threatening. This problem however has little momentum for a solution. A solution exists but someone or some group must step forward to get something started. Government Waste Government Waste to Editorials
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