It seems like every day I read about how government wastes money so I thought I would record them. Since I began this blog, I have been stunned by the amount of waste, fraud, and mismanagement I have found. I recognize that some government is necessary for any society to exist but without the "profit incentive" that we have in private enterprise, government continues to grow like a cancer and along with it the potential for abuse. If you ever needed a reason to limit government, just read some of the following posts.

Sunday, September 30, 2012

$1.2 Trillion In Foreign Aid

Since World War II, the U.S. has spent $1.2 trillion on foreign aid to 70 countries – and all are worse off than they were in 1980, according to the U.N.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

$100 Million In Unused Airline Tickets

A recent audit revealed that between 1997 and 2003, the Defense Department purchased and then left unused approximately 270,000 commercial airline tickets at a total cost of $100 million.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Earned Income Tax Credit

The earned income tax credit (EITC) provides $31 billion in refundable tax credits to 19 million low-income families. The IRS estimates that $8.5 billion to $9.9 billion of this amount—nearly one-third—is wasted in overpayments.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

$2 Million Charles B. Rangel Center

It looks like Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is going to get his wish – $2 million in taxpayer funding for a library commemorating his 37 years in the House of Representatives. The Charles B. Rangel Center for Public service will serve as a repository for his "papers," and the congressman will have his own office in the Harlem complex.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

$146 Million In First Class Air Travel

Federal employees wasted at least $146 million over a one-year period in business- or first-class airline tickets bought in violation of travel policies, congressional investigators say.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Postal Service Spending

The U.S. Postal Service spent more than $792,000 "without justification" on meals and events in one five-month period even as it reported losing $3.8 billion this year, the agency's inspector general says in a report. Among the purchases were crab cakes, beef Wellington and scallops at an installation ceremony for one of several postmasters in the United States, the report says.

Monday, September 24, 2012

State Watchdog Hires Double-dippers to Investigate Waste, Abuse in Government

The New Jersey State Comptroller, with a duty to expose waste in government, has yet to investigate the widespread occurrence of double-dipping by public officials. If he does, Comptroller Matthew Boxer could start with his own investigations division.

Investigator Rick Nuel receives $175,254 a year from the state — a $92,000 paycheck plus an $83,254 pension — New Jersey Watchdog found. In June 2011, Nuel retired at age 46 as a State Police captain.

One week later, Boxer hired Nuel as a special investigator for a unit “charged with detecting and uncovering fraud, abuse, waste and misconduct involving the management of public funds and the performance of government officers, employees and programs.”

It is another act in the follies of a state pension system that faces a $36-billion shortfall, yet allows Nuel and many other public workers to retire with fat pensions at relatively young ages, then return to the state payroll.

Nuel is slated to rake in $2.8 million from the State Police Retirement System by the time he reaches age 80, his statistical life expectancy. And for the foreseeable future, Nuel also will draw a near-six figure salary each year from the comptroller.

Former comptroller’s investigator David Stebbins enjoyed a similar deal. He received two state checks totaling $175,083 a year — $92,000 in salary plus an $83,083 pension. In January 2011, Boxer hired Stebbins 17 days after he retired as a State Police lieutenant at age 50. Earlier this year, Stebbins left the comptroller’s staff.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Where Borrowing $105 Million Will Cost $1 Billion

Last year the Poway Unified School District made a deal: It borrowed $105 million from investors to fund a final push in its decade-long effort to revamp aging schools.

In 2008, voters had given the district permission to borrow more money to finish its modernization, and they had received a big promise from the elected school board in return: No tax increases.

Without increasing taxes, the district couldn’t afford to borrow money in the conventional way. So, instead of borrowing from investors over 20 or 30 years and paying the debt down each year, like a mortgage, the district got creative.

With advice from an Orange County financial consultant, the district borrowed the money over 40 years in a controversial loan called a capital appreciation bond. The key point for the district: It won’t make any payments on the debt for 20 years. And that means the district’s debt will keep getting bigger and bigger as interest on the loan piles up.

The bottom line: For borrowing $105 million in 2011, taxpayers will end up paying investors more than $981 million by 2051, or almost 10 times what the district borrowed. That’s wildly more expensive than a typical school bond, in which a district pays back two or maybe three times what it borrowed.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Abusing Pension Law May Waste Millions

New Jersey local governments failed to remove hundreds of contractors such as lawyers and engineers from pension rolls, which may cost taxpayers millions of dollars a year in improper payouts, a state audit shows.

Auditors identified 202 contractors who work for 134 communities and 25 school districts and participate in the Public Employees’ Retirement System even after a 2007 ban on their participation. Hundreds more probably are still enrolled by more than 1,100 other local government units, according to a report today from Comptroller Matthew Boxer.

The comptroller’s audit found that many of the contractors boost pensions by working for multiple government units, a method called “tacking.” The audit cited an attorney who works for both the borough of Fairview and the Guttenberg school board, earning $241,654 a year combined and amassing credit for 22 years of service and an annual pension of $97,196 if he quit tomorrow. The amount could be cut by $29,420 if the lawyer’s eligibility had ended in 2008, it said.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Neon Sign Museum

The city of Las Vegas has received a $5.2 million federal grant to build the Neon Boneyard Park and Museum, including $1.8 million in 2010. With Nevada‘s high unemployment rates, would it be more popular to figure out a better place in the state to spend the money?

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Feds Spent $823,000 of Economic Stimulus on African Genital-Washing Program

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent $823,200 of economic stimulus funds in 2009 on a study by a UCLA research team to teach uncircumcised African men how to wash their genitals after having sex.

The genitalia-washing program is part of a larger $12-million UCLA study examining how to better encourage Africans to undergo voluntary HIV testing and counseling – however, only the penis-washing study received money from the 2009 economic stimulus law. The washing portion of the study is set to end in 2011.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

$1.5 Million For Banjo Player Museum

Taxpayers may not quite get the twang for their buck from this project. A North Carolina county hopes a $1.5 million federal grant for a museum honoring a local bluegrass singer will provide an economic boost. The Earl Scruggs Center, which is not expected to open until the end of 2011, will contain exhibits paying tribute to the well-known banjo musician.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

$112 Million Bogus Tax Refunds for Prisoners

The Internal Revenue Service paid out $112 million in undeserved tax refunds to prisoners who filed fraudulent returns, according to the Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). According to TIGTA, the IRS fails to screen most tax returns filed by prisoners - even when it knows it has no wage information for them. The inspector general's office first highlighted this lack of oversight in 2005, but the problem has persisted.

Monday, September 17, 2012

$125 Billion in Improper Payments Is Just the Beginning

There is a lot of waste in the federal government: It is documented, Congress holds hearings  about it, and each year the GAO issues a list of programs that are the most at risk for it . But very little changes - in fact, the waste might be getting worse.

Take a look at the trend in  improper payments in the funding of federal programs and activities. As this chart  shows, since the implementation of the Improper Payments Information Act of 2002 reported wasteful payments have increased, which could mean that the amount of waste in the federal government has exploded or simply that federal reviewers have become more adept at documenting it. Either way, overt waste in the federal government represents a significant problem.


Of course, that waste pales in comparison to the waste that exists in current congressional spending patterns, and in the economic damage caused by the misallocation of capital and the creation of perverse incentives. Federal spending on functions that should be left to the states (e.g., education), federal spending on functions that should be left to the private sector (e.g., Amtrak, air-traffic control), and federal spending on things that government has no business doing in the first place (e.g., the stimulus bill’s shovel-ready projects) - all of that is waste, too.

What does the question of the proper role of the federal government have to do with oversight? A lot, actually. When lawmakers are busy running state, local, and private affairs, they have less time to focus on critical national issues. Also, they have less time to conduct proper oversight of federal programs.

The bottom line is that the federal government cannot and should not be the solution to every one of our problems. There are things that only the federal government can do, but when the federal government gets involved where it shouldn’t be, it wastes capital, time, and taxpayers’ money. Shrinking the size of the federal government would reduce wasteful spending dramatically, and shrinking the federal government will make oversight easier and more effective.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Omnibus Spending Bill

Items included in the bill:
  • $1 million for the Iowa historical Society for exhibits related to the world food prize;
  • $750,000 for the Baseball Hall of Fame;
  • $732,000 for the Center for Designing Foods at Iowa State;
  • $725,000 for the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia;
  • $500,000 for the Boat House Museum in St. Charles, Missouri;
  • $500,000 for Tongass Coast Aquarium in Alaska;
  • $350,000 for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame;
  • $210,000 for swine hoop barn research in Iowa;
  • $200,000 for the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center;
  • $150,000 for new office space for the “King of Pork,” Sen. Robert Byrd;
  • $100,000 for the Sea Otter Commission in Alaska;
  • $90,000 for the Cowgirl Hall of Fame.
  • Additionally, CAGW’s List of Omnibus Earmarks includes
  • $560,000 for the Montana Sheep Institute in Bozeman
  • $350,000 for sweet potato research in Miss.
  • $50,000 to study mushrooms in Booneville, Ark
  • $900,000 for the renovation of the El Paso Plaza Theater
  • $300,000 Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, for Universal Kitchen Design project
  • $650,000 for Horseshoe Crab Research

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Federal Workers Fail To Pay Taxes

IRS records show that 340,000 federal government employees or retirees getting government pensions last year owed a total of $2.5 billion in unpaid taxes.  That number includes 2,975 federal workers who were employed by the IRS itself!

Friday, September 14, 2012

City Dwellers Got $394 Million in Farm Subsidies

An estimated 90,000 people living in 350 cities and towns across the country got nearly $400 million in taxpayer-funded crop subsidies last year says a top environmental watchdog group.

The Department of Agriculture no longer serves as a lifeline to millions of struggling homestead farmers. Instead it is a vast, self-perpetuating, postmodern bureaucracy with an amorphous budget of some $130 billion - a sum far greater than the nation’s net farm income this year. In fact, the more the Agriculture Department has pontificated about family farmers, the more they have vanished - comprising now only about 1% of the American population.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Anti-drug Ads Cost Almost $2 Billion

In the past five years the federal government has spent nearly $2 billion in anti-drug ads with apparently no effect in diminishing illegal substance use.  And a recent study suggests that the ads may have actually increased drug use among the young.  But at the same time wants Congress to continue funding the taxpayer money pit.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Even More Pork Barrel Spending

Congress passed a patriotic-sounding bill called the “U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Health, and Iraq Accountability Act,” but the subtitle could be “And Don’t Forget Farmers, Shrimpers, NASA and Other Regulars at Uncle Sam’s Buffet.”  The final version worked out to about $742 million a page.

It includes…
  • $4 million for the Office of Women’s Health at the Food and Drug Administration.
  • $5 million for tropical fish breeders and transporters for losses from a virus last year.
  • $283 million for the Milk Income Loss Contract Program.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

More Pork Barrel Spending

 •  $10 million for attorneys of ILLEGAL immigrants
 •  $100,000 for a swimming pool in Ottawa, Kansas
 •  $1.5 million for the Rep. Richard Gephardt Archive
 •  $576,000 to manage weeds (no location specified)
 •  $700,000 for a bike trail in Minnesota
 •  $1 million for a river walk in Massachusetts
 •  $100,000 for signage in Los Angeles’ fashion district
 •  $250,000 for a wine and culinary center in Prosser, Washington
 •  $113,000 for rodent control in Alaska
 •  $213,000 for olive fruit fly research in FRANCE
 •  $200,000 for hunting and fishing museum in Pennsylvania
 •  $200,000 for post office museum in downtown Las Vegas

Monday, September 10, 2012

Pork Barrel Spending

  • $107,000 to study the sex life of the Japanese quail.
  • $1.2 million to study the breeding habits of the woodchuck.
  • $150,000 to study the Hatfield-McCoy feud.
  • $84,000 to find out why people fall in love.
  • $1 million to study why people don't ride bikes to work.
  • $19 million to examine gas emissions from cow flatulence.
  • $144,000 to see if pigeons follow human economic laws.
  • $219,000 to teach college students how to watch television.
  • $2 million to construct an ancient Hawaiian canoe.
  • $20 million for a demonstration project to build wooden bridges.
  • $160,000 to study if you can hex an opponent by drawing an X on his chest.
  • $800,000 for a restroom on Mt. McKinley.
  • $100,000 to study how to avoid falling spacecraft.
  • $16,000 to study the operation of the komungo, a Korean stringed instrument.
  • $1 million to preserve a sewer in Trenton, NJ, as a historic monument.
  • $6,000 for a document on Worcestershire sauce.
  • $10,000 to study the effect of naval communications on a bull's potency.
  • $100,000 to research soybean-based ink.
  • $1 million for a Seafood Consumer Center.
  • $57,000 spent by the Executive Branch for gold-embossed playing cards on Air Force Two.
Total: $ 45,980,000

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Arlington Cemetery Missing $12 million

Arlington National Cemetery is trying to account for $12 million - about a quarter of its current annual budget - that was allocated to the cemetery between 2004 and 2010 but apparently was never spent.

Congressional leaders and federal investigators who have been probing the cemetery’s operations said at a Senate hearing Wednesday that there was no documentation detailing where the funds are or how such a large amount of taxpayer money could have gone missing. Click here for complete article.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Overlapping Programs

The federal government hosts 47 job-training programs, 44 of which overlap. It runs 80 programs for the "transportation disadvantaged". Another 82 programs spread across 10 separate agencies endeavor to improve teacher quality - something hundreds of local school districts are already focused on.

These are just a few of the findings in a blockbuster report  on government waste and inefficiencies released by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. The report identifies billions of dollars in potential savings if Congress just had the will to streamline initiatives that target politically popular causes.

The study found 33 areas with "overlap and fragmentation" in the federal government. Among them, it found:
  • Fifty-six programs across 20 agencies dealing with financial literacy. 
  • More than 2,100 data centers - up from 432 a little more than a decade ago across 24 federal agencies. GAO estimated the government could save up to $200 billion over the next decade by consolidating them. 
  • Twenty programs across seven agencies dealing with homelessness. The report found $2.9 billion spent on the programs in 2009. "Congress is often to blame" for fragmentation, GAO wrote in this section, explaining that the duplicative programs in multiple agencies cause access problems for potential participants. 
  • Eighty-two "distinct" teacher-quality programs across 10 agencies. Many of them have "duplicate sub-goals," GAO said. Nine of them address teacher quality in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. 
  • Fifteen agencies administering 30 food-related laws. "Some of the oversight doesn't make any sense" the report stated bluntly. 
  • Eighty economic development programs. 
In some cases, the programs in question struggled to account for what they did. Take, for instance, domestic food assistance initiatives. According to GAO, 18 such programs are administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services -- with GAO estimating $62.5 billion spent on them. But "little is known about the effectiveness" of 11 of those programs, the report states. 

Similarly, of the 47 job-training programs run out of the federal government, only five could provide an "impact study" since 2004 looking at "outcomes." About half of them provided no performance review at all since 2004. 

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Miscellaneous Spending Projects

More examples of wasteful spending by the federal government:
  • $1.9 million for a water taxi to Pleasure Beach, Conn.
  • $3.8 million for an urban art trail in Rochester, N.Y.
  • $3.1 million for upgrades to an 88-year-old canal boat museum in New York
  • $3 million for bicycle racks in Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown area
  • $1.5 million for a streetscape project around a Detroit casino
  • $578,000 to fight homelessness in Union, N.Y., a town that reportedly has no homeless people
  • $550,000 for a skateboard park in Pawtucket, R.I.
  • $500,000 for fish food for Missouri fish farmers
  • $400,000 to renovate a vacant building in Jal, N.M.
  • $380,350 to encourage West Virginia landowners to grow ginseng and shiitake mushrooms
  • $90,000 for a shared kitchen for food service entrepreneurs

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Hunger Champion Awards

Through the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), a USDA agency, the Hunger Champion awards are handed out annually to local government agencies for increasing participation in food stamps or Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP). Yes, a taxpayer funded agency is purposefully encouraging individuals to depend on food stamps and then being awarded for doing so.

These “Gold” award winners are sent to the annual conference for State SNAP directors. No matter what part of the country the event or winners are located, taxpayers foot the bill for these trips. These winners are sent to explain their tactics for garnering more SNAP participants and then given a slap on the back for their "great work".

Taxpayer-funded Sex Change

Robert Kosilek was married to a woman. Then he murdered her and went to prison, where he changed his name to Michelle and began identifying as a woman.

Now a federal judge in Boston has ruled that Kosilek is entitled to a taxpayer-funded sex-change operation because he has “gender-identity disorder.”

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

2012 Tennessee Pork Report

The Beacon Center of Tennessee today released its 2012 Tennessee Pork Report, exposing the fact that state and local governments across Tennessee wasted $468 million over the past year. Examples of wasteful spending outlined in the 2012 Pork Report include:
  • $1.5 million blown on a mansion and lavish furnishings by the head of the Upper Cumberland Development District, taking Beacon’s “Pork of the Year” prize;
  • A handout worth $500,000 to build a country music museum in a different state;
  • Another $1.5 million in corporate welfare to General Motors, even after its historic $50 billion federal bailout;
  • $266,000 to a second car company, Volkswagen, to construct a massive sign atop its Chattanooga plant, visible only from the air;
  • $50,000 to haul off dead cows in Columbia; and
  • $1.3 million wasted yet again on state-owned golf courses.

Monday, September 3, 2012

$73K On Superhero Campaign

In a flagrant example of how the government wastes taxpayer dollars, a federally-funded job center in Florida has financed a costly public relations campaign that is distributing thousands of superhero capes to the unemployed.The story would almost be funny if it didn’t involve such an idiotic act with increasingly scarce public funds.

The job agency, Worforce Central Florida, is supposed to help the area’s 100,000-plus unemployed residents find work. Instead, it spent $73,000 on a corny publicity campaign titled “Cape-A-Bility Challenge.” The idea is to “generate awareness” of the agency’s programs, according to an official quoted in the Orlando newspaper that broke the story last week. A cartoon character named “Dr. Evil Unemployment” is the campaign’s star character and 6,000 red satin superhero capes are being distributed to jobless central Floridians who care to participate. The capes cost the government $14, 200 and foam cutouts of “Dr. Evil Unemployment” an additional $2,300.

Apparently, the idea behind the capes is to elevate the self-esteem of the unemployed. The innovative campaign will also raffle gift cards and purchase media spots as well as billboard space. An advertising agency hired to run the promotion will collect $7,500. Ads feature videos of employers, job seekers and the public job agency’s chairman in a cape posing as superman. It’s all part of a brilliant “Everyday Superheroes” theme that the ad agency created for the campaign.

On a bit of a positive note, the media coverage has led state labor officials to request an investigation into the matter. This doesn’t mean that anyone will be punished for such a ridiculous waste of public resources, but at least it will give the agency’s inspector general the opportunity to compile details of how it all went down and whose brilliant idea it was.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

$125 Billion In “Improper Payments”

With the national debt and federal spending at an all-time high several U.S. government agencies joined forces to make an outlandish $125 billion in “improper payments” last year, an increase of more than $16 billion from the previous year. This sort of government waste and corruption is hardly an earth-shattering development. Congressional investigators have for years documented the growing crisis of federal agencies making fraudulent payments to those who don’t qualify yet little has been done to correct the situation. In fact, this month’s audit containing the latest figures stresses that previous investigations have “highlighted long-standing, widespread and significant problems with improper payments in the federal government.”

The impropriety is so pervasive that President Obama issued a much-ballyhooed order last summer commanding federal agencies to create a “Do Not Pay List” to protect taxpayer resources and stem abuse. It has done nothing to protect increasingly scarce taxpayer dollars, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress. In its latest report the GAO reveals that federal agencies made $125.4 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2010, marking a substantial increase from the $109.2 billion it dished out in fiscal 2009. The biggest chunk of the fraudulent payments—more than 90%—was made by social spending programs, mainly Medicare (health coverage for the elderly), Medicaid (health coverage for the poor) and the Labor Department’s unemployment insurance. Improper income tax credits, Social Security and disability payments, free school lunches and food stamps round off the top 10.

Incredibly, just a few weeks ago the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched a $5 million campaign to recruit more food-stamp recipients, even though the GAO reveals that the agency doled out nearly $4.8 billion in improper benefits last year due to “incorrect computations, misapplication of an income or resource exclusion and inadequate verification of accounts and wages”. "There seems to be no end in site to the waste", according to GAO investigators, who diplomatically state that “challenges” remain in “determining the full extent of improper payments across the federal government and in reasonably assuring that effective actions are taken to reduce improper payments.” Some agencies don’t even bother reporting improper payments, the GAO says, so the full extent of the problem will never really be known.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

$4 Million To House 12 Homeless People

Government officials in Bethesda, Maryland, have decided to spend $4 million dollars to provide housing for 12 homeless people for one year. That’s right. The taxpayer will be providing free housing to a dozen folks in Maryland at the rate of $330,000 per person a year.

Judicial Watch reported on this pricey, taxpayer financed arrangement, which will allow Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission to operate a three-story apartment building in Bethesda for 12 homeless adults. According to the Washington Examiner, the facility will have six studio and six one-bedroom apartments as well as a gym and computer center.

About $1 million of funding for the project will come from Obama’s stimulus fund. Montgomery County’s new homeless housing project will also receive $944,829 in county housing funds and $2.1 million in state low-income housing tax credits. All so twelve people can live in a very high average income suburb of Washington, D.C.