Taxpayers pay millions per year for multiple retirement plans serving already wealthy legislators

Members of Congress are eligible for 401(k)-equivalent plans, in addition to generous pension plans. Members of Congress (and other federal employees and members of the uniformed services) are eligible for the Thrift Savings Plan, which is essentially the same as an employer-backed 401(k) retirement fund, except that in this case, the “employer contribution” is actually funded by U.S. taxpayers. The Thrift Savings Plan offers a 5% match rate and competitively low administrative fees, making it widely viewed as one of the best deals around. As of 2019, more than 5.5 million Americans were Thrift Savings Plan participants.

Critics of taxpayer-funded retirement plans for members of Congress wonder why their representatives are allowed to double-dip into taxpayer funded plans, especially when the median net worth of a U.S. member exceeds $1.1 million.Click here to read the full article.

Congress spent $3.06 million on failed impeachment probe

According to a new report, Congress added $3 million to the legislative branch's already exorbitant $1.3 trillion annual budget for the failed impeachment of Donald Trump. The $3 million tally is a conservative estimate, since it does not yet include the impeachment costs run up during the Senate trial in January and February. It also does not factor in overtime pay for Capitol Police, witness travel expenses, or supplies and materials required for the hearings and trial. Adding the impeachment spending to the $32 million spent on the Mueller investigation, the taxpayer has been billed a total of $35 million for the two investigations, neither of which resulted in bipartisan findings of presidential wrongdoing.

Food Stamp Failures

Feds offering $5 million to stop billions of dollars of fraud. Throwing good money after bad, USDA is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to theoretically prevent additional billions from being fraudulently spent. Click here to read the full article.

Political Elites

I cannot help but notice that the politicians and bureaucrats, who want businesses to remain closed, are still receiving paychecks funded by taxpayers. I wonder what their position would be if they had no source of income, could not pay their bills and had to stand in long lines at food banks in order to feed their family.

New York's Waste & Mismanagement

While New York has weathered the brunt of coronavirus infections and deaths, the state’s apparent hoarding of medical supplies, and the millions spent on equipment that never arrived, as well as unused hospitals and beds, have some questioning what went wrong. Click here for full report.

$66 million on a temporary immigrant detention center that was hardly used

The Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), spent $66 million in five months on a temporary, 2,500-person immigration detention facility that housed an average of just 30 detainees a day, and never more than 66 at once.

According to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), CBP paid a private contractor $47 million to establish the detention center in El Paso, Texas and run the facility's support services, such as “meal services, guard services, toilets, and showers."

The report notes that CBP spent about $5.3 million on “the preparation and delivery of meals and snacks” that it did not need. Talk about abusing the corporate credit card — but in this case the credit card is the taxpayer’s wallet.

The facility was ordering food services (three meals a day) for the full capacity of the facility — 2,500 adults — when the center was only housing an average of 28 adults per day. According to the calculations in the report, that means the CBP paid for 675,000 meals in the first three months, when they only needed 13,428.

Another major unnecessary cost at the facility was the excessive number of personnel onsite. The report calculates that for each detainee being held at the facility, there were on average four members of the Texas National Guard, three contracted security guards, and one CBP enforcement officer.

DHS then had the opportunity to close the facility after three months of operating at just 1% capacity. Instead, the department decided to keep it open for another eight weeks, which cost the taxpayers an additional $19 million.million.

Tom Fitton: 'Air Pelosi' – What you don't know about the lucrative travel our leaders enjoy on your dime

Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch wrote the following article for Fox News:

When President Trump denied House Speaker Nancy Pelosi use of a military aircraft for a CODEL (congressional delegation trip) to Afghanistan recently, he called the public’s attention to wasteful taxpayer-funded congressional travel.

In his letter to Pelosi blocking the trip, President Trump mentioned the 800,000 federal workers going without pay. The real irony is that U.S. government workers in Afghanistan, who were among those not being paid, worked for two weeks to plan the trip – and on a holiday weekend.

We at Judicial Watch were not at all surprised by this foolishness. For years we have been exposing the lucrative travel our leaders enjoy at taxpayer expense.

We have long noted Pelosi’s abuse of the perks of public office that granted her access to luxury military travel. This current expedition is hardly new for her.

In 2009, during Pelosi’s first speakership, we uncovered documents from the Department of Defense detailing her multiple requests for military air travel. The documents included internal DOD email correspondence detailing attempts by DOD staff to accommodate Pelosi’s numerous requests for military escorts and military aircraft as well as the speaker’s last-minute cancellations and changes. https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-uncovers-documents-detailing-pelosis-repeated-requests-military-travel/

In response to a series of requests for military aircraft, one Defense Department official wrote, “Any chance of politely querying [Pelosi’s team] if they really intend to do all of these or are they just picking every weekend?… [T]here’s no need to block every weekend ‘just in case’…” The email also notes that Pelosi’s office had, “a history of canceling many of their past requests.”

One DOD official complained about the “hidden costs” associated with the speaker’s last-minute changes and cancellations. “We have … folks prepping the jets and crews driving in (not a short drive for some), cooking meals and preflighting the jets etc.”

The documents include a discussion of House Ethics rules and Defense Department policies as they apply to the speaker’s requests for staff, spouses and extended family to accompany her on military aircraft. In May 2008, for example, Pelosi requested that her husband join her on a CODEL into Iraq. The DOD explained to Pelosi that the agency has a written policy prohibiting spouses from joining CODEL’s into combat zones.

We reported in 2010 that Pelosi’s jet travel cost the Air Force $2,100,744.59 over a two-year period — $101,429.14 of which was for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol. Some details:

The average cost of an international CODEL was $228,563.33. Of the 103 Pelosi-led CODELs, 31 trips included members of the House Speaker’s family.

One CODEL traveling through Tel Aviv, Israel, to Baghdad, Iraq, May 15-20, 2008, included members of Congress and their spouses and cost $17,931 per hour in aircraft alone. Purchases for the CODEL included: Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey’s Irish Crème, Maker’s Mark whiskey, Courvoisier cognac, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewars scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey, Corona beer and several bottles of wine.

And the CODELs didn’t stop after Speaker Pelosi lost power in 2010. We recently released more FOIA documents showing a bill for $184.587.81 for then-House Minority Leader Pelosi’s CODEL to Italy and Ukraine in 2015.

Shutdowns aside, given that our national debt is nearly $22 trillion, it might be reasonable to ask members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, to forego both the booze and the frivolous junkets.

$240,000 Round Trip Flight

Former Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly spent nearly a quarter million dollars on a round-trip flight to Guam that ended in Modly’s resignation. Click here for the full report.

$70,000 to send hip-hop stars to India for cultural understanding

Just The News is reporting that the State Department is funding a $70,000 program called “Bridging Cultures Through Hip-Hop”. The goal of the project is to “explore the commonalities and differences between India and the United States through this influential music genre,” according to a State Department grant description. Click here for complete article.

Use Your PC To Fight COVID-19

Folding@home uses distributed computing to do disease research. It has been around for years, but has recently turned its attention to the COVID-19 virus. You can help in the fight by downloading their program to your personal computer and letting it run in the background. You can choose to run it full time or just when the computer is idle. You can also choose how much power you wish to use. For more information, click here.

Profiles in Corruption

If you have wondered why politicians spend huge amounts of money to run for office, then Peter Schweizer's "Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America's Progressive Elite" is a must read.

Here's a short video explaining one way politicians abuse their power...

$3.06 Million Impeachment

According to an estimate from the Heritage Foundation in December, the Democrat-led House of Representatives inquiry, and eventual impeachment of Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on Dec. 18, cost taxpayers an estimated $3.06 million (this figure doesn't include the Senate trial).

That price tag includes the money spent on the salaries of 106 congressional staffers from the House Intelligence Committee, the Judiciary Committee and the Oversight and Reform Committee, who worked on impeachment from Sept. 24 to Dec. 13, according to the Daily Signal. It also included the estimated hourly fees of six attorneys who appeared during hearings.

Taxpayer-funded 'Political Attack Ad'

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Tuesday that Democrats are essentially producing a taxpayer-funded campaign ad by impeaching President Trump ahead of the November election. Click here to read the full article.

California's New Dystopian Laws

If you are curious as to what would happen if Democrats ran the country, just look at California...

Trump Derangement Syndrome

Just when I think "Trump Derangement Syndrome" cannot get any worse, I read the following from the New York Post...

"Gov. Cuomo just vetoed a bill that would have allowed all federal judges to officiate at weddings in New York — saying he can’t stomach the idea that even some of the jurists might be President Trump appointees.

'I cannot in good conscience support legislation that would authorize such actions by federal judges who are appointed by this federal administration,' Cuomo said in a statement Friday as he shot down the bill — which was passed overwhelmingly by the Democratic-controlled state legislature."