Congressional Perks

The median wealth of a House member is $765,010. For a senator it’s $2.38 million. Yet, incredibly, they still enjoy all of this:

• $174,000 salary
• Free company car
• Free gas
• Free parking (even at airports)
• Free flights almost anywhere in the world
• Per diem travel allowance... up to $3,000 a trip
• A month’s paid vacation
• 3-day work-weeks
• Free membership to a top-flight gym
• Pension plan and 401K plan
• Full retirement benefits (including up to 44% of their six figure salaries) at age 62
• Free top of the line health insurance with 10 plans to choose from
• Fully covered – even with pre-existing condition

Pelosi: "there are no more cuts to make"

In response to a question by Candy Crowly on CNN's "State of the Union" regarding the government cutting spending, Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives, said “the cupboard is bare, there’s no more cuts to make”.

When you read about the amount of waste and fraud in government listed in this blog or Senator Tom Coburn's website or Citizens Against Government Waste, you realize what a ridiculous statement that was. This is the same politician who said "we have to pass it (Obamacare) in order to understand what's in it". In my opinion, this goes a long way in explaining why we have a dysfunctional congress and runaway national debt.

IRS: $67 Million Missing From Obamacare Fund

Excerpts from Americans for Tax Reform:

• The IRS is unable to account for $67 million spent from a slush fund established for Obamacare implementation, according to a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report released today. 
• The “Health Insurance Reform Implementation Fund” (HIRIF) was tucked into Obamacare in order to give the IRS money to enforce the tax provisions of the healthcare law. The fund, totaling some $1 billion of taxpayer money, was used to roll out enforcement mechanisms for the approximately 50 tax provisions of Obamacare. 
• Travel abuse: The report states, “Specifically, we identified 38 IRS employees in two judgmentally selected business units whose travel was charged to the HIRIF in FY 2012, but no portion of their salary and related benefits was charged to the HIRIF.” In short, the IRS was not making sure that employee travel reimbursements had anything to do with the purpose of the fund. This is not the first time that IRS employee travel has created a scandal for the agency.
• 1,272 IRS Obamacare enforcement agents: The report estimates that total slush fund spending cost taxpayers the equivalent of 1,272 new full time IRS agents.
• The IRS requested an additional 859 IRS Obamacare enforcement agents for Fiscal Year 2013: According to the report, “The IRS informed us that it requested $360 million and 859 FTEs for FY 2013 to continue implementation of the ACA.

Congress: "Do as we say, not as we do"

Members of Congress have always considered themselves above the people they represent. They give themselves automatic pay raises, travel the world on political junkets, use their positions to enrich themselves at taxpayers expense, have their own insurance and health/retirement plans in lieu of Social Security, plus many more perks.

One of their most egregious acts is exempting themselves and their staff from certain provisions of Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act requires the 11,000 people who work on Capitol Hill to purchase their health insurance on its exchanges but many of them earn too much to qualify for subsidies. That's a financial hit worth about $5,000 for individuals and $11,000 for families. So in early August, President Obama's personnel team came to the rescue with a let-the-good-times-roll regulation that entitles Members and aides to their current premium contributions on the basis of zero legal authority. Once again, Congress looks out for itself, not its constituents.

Record Taxation

The federal government raked in a record $2.472 trillion in tax revenues through the first eleven months of fiscal 2013 which ran from Oct. 1, 2012 through the end of August according to the Monthly Treasury Statement for August. That is up about $285 billion from the $2.187 trillion the government took in through August of fiscal 2012.

Despite these record tax revenues, the federal government still accumulated a $755 billion deficit in the first eleven months of fiscal 2013. Total federal spending through the first eleven months of the fiscal year was $3.228 trillion.

List of Government Waste: $788,595,076,947

The Fiscal Times put together the following list which summarizes a lot of the waste that has been posted to this blog. When a new report identifies wasteful spending, someone always tends to say, “it’s a mere $600 million or it’s only $1 billion—a rounding error” compared to the $3.8 trillion that makes up the Federal budget. However, as Senator Everett Dirksen once said “a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money”.

Agency	Project	Amount	Time Spent
Department of Agriculture	Smuttynose brewery - 3 brew tanks	750,970	1 Year
Department of Agriculture	Improper payments to farm producers	16,000,000	1 Year
Department of Agriculture	Improper loans	208,000,000	1 Year
Department of Agriculture	Alabama Watermelon Queen Tour	25,000	1 Year
Department of Defense	Soccer Field in Guantanamo	750,000	1 Year
Department of Education	Student Aid Scams	1,400,000,000	1 Year
Department of Energy	Initiative for Proliferation Prevention (A Cold War Program)	15,000,000	1 Year
Department Of Justice	Conferences	58,000,000	1 Year
Department of Labor	Dropouts from Underperforming Job Programs	118,000,000	1 Year
Department of Labor	Overpayments	148,000,000	1 Year
Department of Labor	Consumer Fraud	14,000,000,000	1 Year
Department of Transportation	Contract Mismanagement	157,000,000	1 Year
Economic Dev. Agency	Fake Cyber Threat Purge	3,000,000	1 Year
FAA	Oklahoma Empty Airport	450,000	1 Year
Federal Grant	Book Vending Machine	35,000	1 Year
Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services	Star Wars Event	365	1 Year
General Accounting Office	Overlapping Programs	95,000,000,000	1 Year
General Accounting Office	Bank Fees for Empty Accounts	890,000	1 Year
Health and Human Services	Medicare Fraud and Abuse	115,300,000,000	1 Year
Health and Human Services	Medicare Drug Cost Alignment	3,140,000,000	1 Year
House of Representatives	Snacks	30,000	3 Months
Housing and Urban Dev.	Pet Toothpaste & Shampoo	505,000	1 Year
Inspector General Handbook	Multiple, Across Agencies	67,000,000,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Employee Fraud	250,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Employee Fraud	30,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Blackberry/AirCard	4,800,000	5 Years
Internal Revenue Service	Refund Errors	829,000,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Meetings	50,000,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Video Production	60,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Agency Retreat	4,000,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Bonuses	70,000,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Improper Software Contract	500,000,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Annual Tax Gap (~ $500 billion) $3 collected for every $1 in additional enforcement	300,000,000,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Improper Use of Credit Cards	2,500	1 Year
National Science Foundation	Robo Squirrel	325,000	1 Year
National Endowment for the Arts	Circus Classes	20,000	1 Year
Pentagon	Rebuilding Iraq	60,000,000,000	10 Years
Pentagon	Abrams Tanks	436,000,000	1 Year
Pentagon	64,000sqft Building that the Military Knew would not be occupied	34,000,000	Unknown
Pentagon	Roll-up beef jerky development	639,884	1 Year
Pentagon/Afghanistan	Afghanistan tax bill	1,000,000,000	1 Year
Pentagon/Afghanistan	USAID Power Project	53,000,000	Unknown
Pentagon/Afghanistan	Training Police and Security - Considered Ineffective	50,000,000	Ongoing
Pentagon/Afghanistan	Construction used as chicken coop	26,000,000	Unknown
Pentagon/Afghanistan	Contract money ending up in Taliban hands	360,000,000	Ongoing
Pentagon/Afghanistan	USAID	100,000,000,000	Ongoing
Pentagon/Afghanistan	Equipment Left Behind	7,000,000,000	1 Year
State Department	Facebook "Likes"	630,000	2 Years
Tom Coburn Waste Book	Minus the 12 Items Above	18,855,248,781	1 Year
U.S. Forest Service	Smokey the Bear Balloons	49,447	1 Year
U.S. Park Police	Missing hundreds of Military-style weapons	?	?
USAID	Moroccan Pottery Classes	27,000,000	1 Year
Vice President Biden	One Night in Paris	585,000	1 Night
TOTAL: 788,595,076,947

Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937

The Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 enables the Agriculture Department to seize of a portion of every California raisin farmer’s annual crop, in certain years as much as 47 percent, without a right to compensation, and in some years with no compensation at all. The seized raisins are stored in California warehouses for months or years and then sold to handlers who distribute and sell them on the world market.

Marvin Horne has been breaking the law for 11 solid years. He now owes the U.S. government at least $650,000 in unpaid fines. And 1.2 million pounds of unpaid raisins, roughly equal to his entire harvest for four years. In response to a USDA administrative enforcement proceeding against him, Mr. Horne and members of his family filed a lawsuit to claim that government seizure of farmers’ raisins without compensation is unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment.

In June, the Supreme Court heard Mr. Horne’s case and sent it back to a federal appeals court to review the constitutionality of the raisin seizures; previously the lower court had ruled that it didn’t have jurisdiction. In that hearing, Supreme Court justices showed both amusement and concern. “Your raisins or your life,” joked Justice Antonin Scalia about the penalties Mr. Horne faces. Justice Elena Kagan questioned whether it may be “just the world’s most outdated law,” and Justice Stephen Breyer said, “I can’t believe Congress wanted the taxpayers to pay for a program that’s going to mean they have to pay higher prices.”

I am reminded of Ronald Reagan's quote: "The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program".

Illinois grant-fraud: $16M embezzled

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the U.S. attorney’s office in Springfield has been busy the past few years investigating a variety of fraud schemes involving state grants. Thirteen people have been charged so far, six who have pleaded guilty.

One is the daughter of the controversial pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Another was chief of staff to Eric E. Whitaker when Whitaker was Illinois’ public health chief. There is even a former police chief. All of these individuals were supposed to be helping the poor but were, in fact, enriching themselves at the taxpayers' expense.

Energy Department loses $42M on clean-energy loan

The Energy Department conceded Friday that the federal government will lose $42 million on a loan to a shuttered Michigan van manufacturer — part of the same program that provided a $529 million loan to an electric car maker that also has gone under. Vehicle Production Group (VPG), which made vans for the disabled, ceased operations in February and laid off 100 workers, two years after receiving a $50 million federal loan under the same clean-energy program that provided a $529 million loan to electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc.

The losses come after federal government’s failed risk on solar panel maker Solyndra, which went under in 2011 despite receiving more than $500 million from the Energy Department. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chairman of a House Oversight subcommittee on economic growth and regulation, called the loan program “one of the most disastrously mismanaged and corrupt programs in U.S. history”.

Merit Systems Protection Board: $44 Million/Year

The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) is a 211-employee agency within the Executive Branch. The MSPB has 6 regional offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. It spends $3.9 million to rent office space.

The MSPB was created by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Defenders of the MSPB argue that there needs to be an independent, third-party adjudicatory system for federal employee appeals. However, the judicial system already serves that function and a special institution that just handles allegations by federal employees is not necessary. The burdens of pursuing legal action through the courts will deter frivolous and unnecessary claims and encourage more mediations and settlements, thereby lowering administrative costs to taxpayers. Since the Federal Courts disagreed with the MSPB less than 10 percent of the time in FY 2010, it would seem there is no need for the MSPB.

Hollywood Liaison Offices: $34 Million

Several agencies in our government have offices and programs whose sole purpose is to help movie directors and Hollywood producers make their movies and television shows. They often do this to make sure the production portrays the federal government and its bureaucrats in a good light. There are at least 14 employees that have a combined salary of $1.2 million.

The Centers for Disease Control‘s (CDC) Entertainment Education Program collaborates with Hollywood to raise awareness and encourages people to live healthier lives. The CDC has worked with shows such as Grey‘s Anatomy and Army Wives. In other words, the CDC spends $1.9 million to ensure that when a made up character in a fictitious TV show talks about a health topic, he or she talks about it accurately. Surely, we can find better ways to spend $34.4 million.

Fort Hood Shooter Paid $278,000 While Awaiting Trial

The Department of Defense confirms that accused Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan has now been paid more than $278,000 since the Nov. 5, 2009 shooting that left 13 dead and 32 injured. The Army said under the Military Code of Justice, Hasan’s salary cannot be suspended unless he is proven guilty. If Hasan had been a civilian defense department employee, the Army could have suspended his pay after just seven days.

Meanwhile, more than three years later soldiers wounded in the mass shooting are fighting to receive the same pay and medical benefits given to those wounded in combat. The Army has not classified the wounds of the Ft. Hood victims as “combat related” and declines to label the shooting a “terrorist attack”. The Army has categorized the shooting as a case of “workplace violence”.

EPA Adviser - $900,000 Pay Fraud

The Washington Post has reported that a high-level staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency was paid $900,000 for work he never performed for the agency. Click here to view the complete article.