Government Blatantly Wastes $30 Billion This Year

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fiscal Times:

When the sequester cuts slashed $85 billion from the federal budget, crippling federal programs like Head Start and halting crucial research at the National Institutes of Health, the government continued spending tax dollars on things like 3-D pizza printers for NASA, a beachfront property loan program for millionaires, and a $300 million Army surveillance blimp that doesn’t work.

 

Those are just three of the 100 examples of egregious government waste that cost taxpayers $30 billion this year--all detailed in Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) annual “Wastebook,” released Tuesday.

 

The report, obtained Monday night by The Fiscal Times, documents a host of federally-subsidized programs and projects that have incurred significant costs while offering little or no benefit to taxpayers.

________

 

Wasting away in Washington...

 

[Valin]

A. How many years/decades have we known about this?

1. speaking personally...a lot! (see 1982 The Grace Commission)

 

B. How long before the whole system breaks down?

"Trends That Cannot Continue....Won't"

 

C. The problem is Government, particularly the Federal Government has a vested interest in not changing.

 

 

Chapter Eight Breakdown in Government

The most frightening breakdown in government in our generation is the breakdown of the rule of law.

 

America was founded on the rule of law. The Founding Fathers understood that only the rule of law guarantees justice and opportunity for every citizen. They regarded the Kings violation of the rule of law as the chief justification for the American Revolution.

 

The widespread breakdown in government is now obvious to Americans of both parties. The failures are becoming a problem of daily life. Citizens across the country are looking for some way to break out of this obsolete mess that is serving the people so poorly.

 

It is clear that minor tinkering will fail. We need extensive and extraordinary change to replace, not to reform, the broken-down parts of government. We need breakthroughs so large they can bring down the bureaucratic state, as light bulbs made candles obsolete.

 

OTOH....

 

 

Chapter Nine Breakout in Government

Much of Washington has forgotten that government is not the whole society. It is just a small piece of it or at least it should be. What communities and citizen volunteers can do, government should leave to them to do. What state and local governments can do, the federal government should let them do.

 

A meaningful program of civil service reform would impose modern technology and management practices on the federal bureaucracy.

 

Cutting out the waste, however, will not get rid of the federal morass. Americans must also demand a complete rethinking of the regulatory state, which is killing innovation and strangling our economy. Every major regulatory agency should be reorganized, and evey major regulation reassessed with the goal of removing the barriers to innovation.