Big government throws around taxpayer money without any sense of responsibility or sanity. Larry Edelson notes:
As our country heads toward another midnight fiscal brawl, let me give you some examples of how completely irresponsible our leaders are:
In 2010, the Internal Revenue Service spent $4.1 million on a lavish conference for 2,609 of its employees in Anaheim, California. Expenses included $50,000 for line dancing and “Star Trek” parody videos, and $64,000 in conference perks for employees, plus free meals, cocktails and hotel-suite upgrades.
In 2012, the Department of Agriculture spent $300,000 on activities promoting caviar produced in Idaho.
The Federal Communications Commission spent $2.2 billion in 2012 to provide phones to low-income Americans, up from $819 million in 2008. A review found that 41 percent of over 6 million recipients were either ineligible or failed to prove their eligibility for the program.
The Department of Energy’s Savannah River facility spent $7.7 million on severance packages for 526 temporarily hired contract workers instead of issuing layoff notices. That’s over $14,600 per “temporary” employee.
Taxpayers spent $700 million in stimulus funds on the Department of Energy’s Smart Grid Demonstration Program. An audit found that $12.3 million in reimbursements lacked required supporting documentation.
The U.S. Secret Service spent $23 million to purchase a new fleet of luxury parade limousines. No competitive bids were sought.
The White House is spending $376 million on a four-year renovation of the Executive Mansion, which includes a second Oval Office for the president to use during the renovation.
The General Services Administration’s poor oversight of 33 courthouse-construction projects from 2000 to 2010 cost taxpayers $835 million in extra building expenses.
The National Endowment for the Arts gave a $100,000 grant to fund development of a video game about a female superhero sent to save planet Earth from climate changes.
The Transportation Security Administration let 5,700 pieces of unused security equipment worth $184 million sit in storage in a Dallas warehouse, costing taxpayers $3.5 million annually to lease and manage.
This year, the U.S. government will pay $65 per year, per account, in service fees to keep 13,712 of its empty bank accounts — with, I repeat, no money in them — on the books, costing taxpayers $890,000.
Medicare was recently found to have overpaid hospitals and clinics for a kidney dialysis drug to the tune of $800 million per year, an error that won’t be corrected until new rates are established in 2014.
A 2012 report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration identified $757 million in fraudulent tax refunds to prisoners in 2010.
Due to poor oversight, over 1,000 Pennsylvania prisoners were able to collect weekly unemployment benefits over a four-month period, costing taxpayers $7 million.
A fiscal 2011 Performance and Accountability Report from the Social Security Administration (SSA) found it overpaid $2.11 billion in Social Security benefits.
The same report found that the SSA overpaid old-age, survivor and disability insurance benefits by $934 million in fiscal 2010 alone.
Also in 2010, 117,000 individuals received $850 million in cash benefits by double-dipping into Social Security’s disability insurance program and the federal unemployment insurance program.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded a $149,992 grant to researchers at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey to study college students’ on-campus dining selections.
The Office of Naval Research conducted a $450,000 study to determine whether babies would pay attention to unintelligent robots.
In a study costing $681,387, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research confirmed that men bearing firearms appear taller, stronger and manlier than those who don’t carry firearms.
The same U.S. Air Force office also conducted a $300,000 study that concluded that the first bird on Earth probably had black feathers.
And the list of documented cases of wasteful,
ridiculous spending and oversight by our leaders
in Washington goes on and on.
And now our leaders are bickering — not about how to cut wasteful spending and improve its operating efficiency, or even to really tighten Washington’s collective belt — but about which party can get the most political clout and pork barrel concessions stuffed in any bill that raises our country’s debt ceiling so we can go deeper into hock. As if $17 trillion in debt isn’t enough. [more...]