Sequester This: Billions Wasted on Duplicative Federal Programs

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Waste: How many federal agencies does it take to inspect a catfish? Three, apparently. No joke. It's just one of many outrageous but all-too-true examples of billions of dollars in waste uncovered by a new government audit.

The Government Accountability Office's latest annual report on government waste and duplication found 31 areas in the government that overlap, duplicate efforts or are egregiously inefficient. That's on top of the 131 found in its previous two annual reports.

In many cases, the government has no idea whether any of these programs actually work.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who pushed for this report, figures the latest examples alone add up to $95 billion — more than the spending cuts under this year's "sequester." There are, for example, 23 agencies pushing more than 670 renewable energy programs, a quarter of which President Obama added. In wind energy alone, nine agencies threw $4 billion at 82 wind energy projects in 2011.

[Valin]

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

P. J. O'Rourke

 

 

I wish this was the 1st time I've seen this kind of report...Alas. The question is how long will this go on? A reckoning is coming maybe not today, not tomorrow not this year, but sometime fairly soon....and it will be messy. We're Broke.