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.

Thursday, June 27, 2019

2019 Congressional Pig Book

The 2019 Congressional Pig Book has unearthed 282 earmarks costing taxpayers $15.3 billion in the appropriations bills funding the federal government in fiscal year (FY) 2019. The cost is more than half of the record of $29 billion in earmarks set 13 years ago – an ominous uptick in congressionally-directed, special interest spending. This also marks the seventh time that members of Congress violated the earmark moratorium adopted in FY 2011 in order to waste vital taxpayer dollars on parochial and non-essential pet projects.


Among the egregious examples of pork-barrel waste highlighted in the 2019 Pig Book are $13.8 million to manage wild horses and burros, $9 million to quarantine fruit flies, and $863,000 to eradicate brown tree snakes in Guam.