A lot of discussion has been taking place about the amount of money our government spends every year. Both on Political Realities and on other blogs and in news stories, the new budget of President Obama has been looked at and dissected, cussed and discussed, if you please. The amount of money in question is staggering, to the tune of $3.69 trillion. My head spins just thinking about it.

As seems to be obligatory for the opposing political party, the Republicans are coming out in droves and talking about how the President has increased spending. While that is true, it is also a fact that he has been faced with a period of unsettling economic activity. So, it can be argued that he has a reason to increase spending, ie. to help shore up our economy. I do not necessarily agree with how he has went about doing that, but that has been the subject of other articles. I want to look at another area that I believe needs to be addressed. Namely, the way our government wastes the money it takes in as revenue.

When most people think of wasteful government spending, the first thing that comes to mind is what is commonly known as earmarks. These are items that are inserted into the various and sundry pieces of spending legislation as they make their way through the halls of Congress and to the White House, to be signed into law by the President.  When John McCain was campaigning for President, one of the promises he made was to do his best to reduce or eliminate a lot of these earmarks. Even before he was running for President, he was true to his word, as he does not accept earmarks as senior Senator from Arizona. He is truly the exception, as the earmark process is a scourge that transcends party lines. Republicans and Democrats alike, members of both political parties line up with their hands out. It’s a mad race to see who can bring home the most money to their individual states.

It has been argued in the past that earmarks make up a very tiny portion of the entire budget and I can not dispute that. Consider this information from Citizens Against Government Waste.

The 341 projects, totaling $4.2 billion, in this year’s Congressional Pig Book Summary symbolize the most egregious and blatant examples of pork.

Yes, $4.2 billion is a paltry sum, when taken in context of the entire budget of $3.69 trillion. However, when you begin to look deeper, it is evident that our government wastes a lot more money than just $4.2 billion. There is more going on than just earmarks. The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) has it’s hands full dealing with waste, fraud, and improper payments. Some accounts have the numbers in the hundreds of billions of dollars. It seems the deeper you go into the spending practices of the United States government, the more waste and fraud you find.

For example, Hogue News has an article by Paul Smith, who is running for Congress in the 5th Congressional District of California, which is the Sacramento area. Keep in mind that he is running as a Republican and the article in question is  written to highlight how he will attempt to fight wasteful government spending. The numbers he cites are backed up by numerous footnotes and links to the GAO.

• The federal government made at least $72 billion in improper payments in 2008.[1]
  Washington spends $92 billion on corporate welfare (excluding TARP) versus $71 billion on homeland security.[2]

• Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties.[3]

• Government auditors spent the past five years examining all federal programs and found that 22 percent of them–costing taxpayers a total of $123 billion annually–fail to show any positive impact on the populations they serve.[4]

• The Congressional Budget Office published a “Budget Options” series identifying more than $100 billion in potential spending cuts.[5]

• Examples from multiple Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports of wasteful duplication include 342 economic development programs; 130 programs serving the disabled; 130 programs serving at-risk youth; 90 early childhood development programs; 75 programs funding international education, cultural, and training exchange activities; and 72 safe water programs.[6]

• Washington will spend $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job.[7]

• A GAO audit classified nearly half of all purchases on government credit cards as improper, fraudulent, or embezzled. Examples of taxpayer-funded purchases include gambling, mortgage payments, liquor, lingerie, iPods, Xboxes, jewelry, Internet dating services, and Hawaiian vacations. In one extraordinary example, the Postal Service spent $13,500 on one dinner at a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, including “over 200 appetizers and over $3,000 of alcohol, including more than 40 bottles of wine costing more than $50 each and brand-name liquor such as Courvoisier, Belvedere and Johnny Walker Gold.” The 81 guests consumed an average of $167 worth of food and drink apiece.[8]

• Federal agencies are delinquent on nearly 20 percent of employee travel charge cards, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually.[9]

The above list is only a small portion of what is listed in the article, but I think you get the picture. Am I the only one who thinks our government should be able to stop some of the waste and fraud that consumes so many of our tax dollars? I have already stated that the sums in question seem to pale when you compare them to the entire budget, but shouldn’t we at least be making an effort to to reduce or eliminate some of this waste? We should be able to start with the smaller things and work our way up to the worst areas. Give ourselves a little practice, as it were, before tackling the more expensive areas of waste.

I believe this effort needs to go beyond what President Obama is calling for with a freeze of discretionary spending in 2011. As he campaigned for President, Barack Obama promised that his administration would look at government spending, identify areas of waste, duplicate spending, etc. and do it’s best to reduce or eliminate them. I would like to see him give more attention to this problem.

This is not an indictment of President Obama and his administration, but rather an indictment of our federal government and it’s way of doing business. As I have already said, it is a problem that belongs to both political parties and it will only be solved when the Republicans and the Democrats start working together to identify and stop the bleeding.

Tags: Congress, Earmarks, John McCain, President Obama, Wasteful Spending

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 8:20 am and is filed under News/Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.