2015 US Budget Allocations

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Top 10 Examples of Government Waste in 2013

 

The latest budget deal, passed by a bipartisan majority in both the House and the Senate, suggests that Washington agrees with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) when she said that “the cupboard is bare. There’s no more cuts to make.”

The cupboard, however, is overflowing with liquor, crystal glassware, and more.

Here is our list of the top 10 examples of wasteful government spending this year, serving as a reminder that there is no shortage of excessive spending in Washington.

10. Outhouse in Alaska: $98,670. The Interior Department spent nearly $100,000 to install an outhouse on an Alaskan trail, which includes a single toilet with no internal plumbing.

9. A bus stop with heated pavement for the Washington area: $1 million. A lavish bus stop with heated pavement was built in Arlington, VA, but it has failed to keep commuters warm or dry.

8. Grant for a pole dancing performance: $10,000. Utility poles, that is. The National Endowment for the Arts provided a grant to PowerUP for Austin Energy employees to perform an artsy dance with 20 utility poles, accompanied by a live orchestra.

7. Pizza — from a printer: $124,995. NASA gave a six-figure grant to a company that aspires to make pizza from a 3-D printer.

6. Study to find out if couples are happier when the woman calms down after argument: $335,525. “[M]arriages that were the happiest were the ones in which the wives were able to calm down quickly during marital conflict,” found a study of 81 couples funded by the National Institutes of Health.

5. Booze and crystal for the State Department: $5.4 million. The State Department went on a bender the week before the government shutdown, purchasing $5 million of “exquisite” crystal glassware to presumably drink the $400,000 in booze they purchased in 2013.

4. Monitoring depression on Twitter: $82,000. The National Institutes of Health is funding a study “to use Twitter for surveillance on depressed people,” according to the Free Beacon.

3. Seven-figure stack of rocks at the London Embassy: $1 million. The American Embassy in London will be receiving a granite sculpture from an artist “whose work resembles stacked piles of paving stones,” according to the Daily Mail.

2. Artwork for Veterans Affairs offices: $562,000. The Department of Veterans Affairs went on a spending spree during “use it or lose it” season, purchasing over half a million in artwork and millions in furniture in a single week.

1. Government employee trip to luxury hotel in the Caribbean: priceless. Federal employees took a taxpayer-funded trip to the Buccaneer Hotel in St. Croix—the same hotel made famous on TV’s “The Bachelor.” The bill was divided among a number of agencies, making a final tally difficult to come by.

Read More: Heritage

As of January 1st, 2014, Colorado became the first state in the nation to allow adults aged 21 or older to purchase and use marijuana for recreational use. The decision has led to excessively large lines at pot shops across the state and store owners reportedly surpassed $1 million in sales statewide on just the first day according to Denver’s 9News. - See more at: http://conservativefrontline.com/colorado-pot-shop-accept-food-stamps-taxpayer-funded-marijuana-welfare-recipients/#sthash.qkRiGdZa.dpuf

As of January 1st, 2014, Colorado became the first state in the nation to allow adults aged 21 or older to purchase and use marijuana for recreational use. The decision has led to excessively large lines at pot shops across the state and store owners reportedly surpassed $1 million in sales statewide on just the first day according to Denver’s 9News. - See more at: http://conservativefrontline.com/colorado-pot-shop-accept-food-stamps-taxpayer-funded-marijuana-welfare-recipients/#sthash.qkRiGdZa.dpuf

INTERVIEW: Senator Mike Lee, Rush Limbaugh and Defunding ObamaCare

 

RUSH: We're happy to welcome to our program Senator Mike Lee from Utah. He's gonna bring us up-to-date on his effort here to lead the Republican Party in the Senate to attempting to defund Obamacare.  Senator, welcome.  Great to have you here.

LEE:  Thank you, Rush.  It's a pleasure to be with you.

RUSH:  Tell me and everybody else what you're trying to do because there are now people saying what you want to do can't be done because so much of the spending is locked in.  I've read no, that's not true.  And then, second question, I remain perplexed.  I mean, you got a majority of the American people that oppose this, and I don't see the Republican Party trying to connect with them, outside of you and a couple others.  So a lot of this doesn't make any sense to a whole lot of people.


LEE:  That's right, it doesn't make any sense to a whole lot of people outside the Washington Beltway.  You see, inside the Washington Beltway, this discussion is controversial.  Outside the Beltway, Obamacare is universally despised.  This is an issue, Rush, that is no longer just about Republican versus Democrat.  It's no longer about liberal versus conservative.  This is about Washington, DC, versus everyone else.  This law is despised because it's gonna make our health care unaffordable.  It's also going to make health care unfair, because the president has said he's gonna hold hardworking Americans to the line and punish them if they don't comply with the law's exacting demands, but he's gonna give a big carve-out for Big Business.  Big Business doesn't have to comply.  The American people shouldn't have to put up with it. The president said he's not ready to implement the law. We shouldn't fund it.

RUSH:  When you say Big Business doesn't have to comply, you're talking about the one-year waiver on the employer mandate?

LEE:  That's correct.  The president's selectively enforcing the law in a way that he doesn't have the authority to do.
RUSH:  Isn't that a tantamount admission that the law's punitive and he doesn't want it to be punitive going into an election?

LEE:  Yes.  It's punitive, so he looked at that aspect of the law that is the most unpopular with those who can afford lobbyists, the most unpopular with those who have contacts that can get into the White House and get an audience, and so that's what he's doing, is he's throwing this bone out there so that he doesn't get attacked as much within the business community and the lobbyist community.  Meanwhile, he's throwing the rest of us out into this wasteland that is the world of Obamacare.

RUSH:  Well, maybe you can help some of us understand.  Even if the Republican Party does not want to be identified or known as a conservative party, they still are an opposition party.  I don't understand why they're not, even if they believe that what you want to do can't be done, why not make a stand?  Why not stand up and say, "This is who we are. This is what we're for.  This is why this is bad.  This is why we want to repeal it for you." There's a majority of the American people waiting to be connected with.  Why this capitulation with the Democrats, Senator?

LEE:  The fact that that question is so difficult to answer is itself a great source of frustration to me, because, look, we have a majority of the representatives in the House and a sizeable plurality of the senators who are against Obamacare, have been since day one.  In the House they voted 39, 40, 41 times to repeal it.  So those of us who say we're against it, those of you who recognize this law's going to be bad for the American people, ought to be willing to stand up and say, "You know, one of the few powers that we still guard jealously within Congress is the power of the purse."  We should simply refuse to fund Obamacare.  We want to fund the rest of government, just not Obamacare.

The Rest of the Interview: RushLimbaugh.com

Is Chicago the Next Detroit?

 

So it turns out the president's home city of Chicago (D-IL) is suffering through a bit of fiscal trouble:

 

Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed the books on 2012 with $33.4 million in unallocated cash on hand — down from $167 million the year before — while adding to the mountain of debt piled on Chicago taxpayers, year-end audits show. Last week, Moody’s Investors ordered an unprecedented triple-drop in the city’s bond rating, citing Chicago’s “very large and growing” pension liabilities, “significant” debt service payments, “unrelenting public safety demands” and historic reluctance to raise local taxes that has continued under Emanuel.

Those unprecedented downgrades were delivered despite what the Sun-Times describes as Mayor Rahm Emanuel's "aggressive cost-cutting measures."  Long-term unfunded promises and the costs of servicing the city's debt are swamping shorter-term attempts at fiscal restraint.  Absent significant reforms, this is America's future, too.  More on that eye-opening triple downgrade, directly from the credit ratings agency:

Moody's Investors Service has downgraded the City of Chicago's (IL) general obligation (GO) and sales tax ratings to A3 from Aa3; water and sewer senior lien revenue ratings to A1 from Aa2; and water and sewer second lien revenue ratings to A2 from Aa3. Chicago has $7.7 billion of GO debt, $566 million of sales tax debt, $2.0 billion of water revenue debt, and $1.3 billion of sewer revenue debt outstanding. The outlook on all ratings is negative ...The downgrade of the GO rating reflects Chicago's very large and growing pension liabilities and accelerating budget pressures associated with those liabilities. The city's budgetary flexibility is already burdened by high fixed costs, including unrelenting public safety demands and significant debt service payments.

Moody's reference to "unrelenting public safety demands" is in part a euphemism for Chicago's appalling murder and violent crime crisis, which manages to remain alarmingly acute despite the city's strict anti-gun laws.  Strange, that.  Oh, did I say triple downgrade?  I meant quadruple, and this one genuinely hurts The Children:

Chicago's public schools on Wednesday forecast a record $1 billion fiscal 2014 budget deficit despite layoffs of 1,000 teachers and the expected closing of 50 schools, prompting one credit agency to downgrade its debt rating. The nation's third-largest public school district blamed the mounting red ink on an expected sharp rise in annual pension payments for teachers, because the state of Illinois has failed to curb ballooning pension costs.

For years, Illinois teachers unions negotiated unsustainable contracts with their Democratic buddies, who run the city and state -- a vicious cycle that is has begun its inevitable meltdown.  The obligations owed to these government employees are consuming the city's budget, prompting desperate bouts of austerity cuts -- which are now unavoidable.  To paraphrase one of the city's prominent citizens, Chicago's fiscal recklessness is comin' home to roost.

Read More: Town Hall 

Why doesn't our Border Patrol have enough fuel to do their jobs?

 

Budget cuts have hampered the U.S. Border Patrol's work in its busiest sector on the Southwest border, agents said Friday, with the agency introducing fuel conservation measures in the Rio Grande Valley that have agents patrolling on foot and doubling up in vehicles.

 

The Border Patrol instituted the changes after the across-the-board government spending cuts known as sequestration. The constraints come as Congress moves deeper into the debate over comprehensive immigration reform and Republican legislators push for stronger border security components as a precursor to any path to citizenship for immigrants who have entered the country illegally.

The Rio Grande Valley sector — a stretch of border from Brownsville to Laredo on the southernmost tip of Texas — has become the agency's hottest area along the border. The Border Patrol's arrests of people trying to cross the border illegally jumped 65 percent in that area last year. At the end of May, sector Chief Patrol Agent Rosendo Hinojosa said agents had already made more than 90,000 apprehensions in the first eight months of the fiscal year, a 50 percent increase over the same period last year.

In a prepared statement Friday, the Border Patrol said, "Sequestration continues to have serious impacts on (Customs and Border Protection's) operations including nearly $600 million in cuts." A spokesman declined to address the fuel restraints specifically.

Read More: Fox News

What does the United Nations really cost the U.S. Taxpayer?

 

Year after year, the U.S. pays more into the United Nations system than any other nation. Yet figuring out exactly how much we spend on the U.N. and its affiliated organizations is deceptively difficult.

Although most U.S. contributions come from the State Department, hundreds of millions of dollars also flow from other parts of the federal government. Thus, relying on State Department data fails to capture the full picture.

In 2006, Senator Tom Coburn addressed this issue by asking the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for a comprehensive report on total U.S. contributions to the U.N. system for fiscal years 2001 through 2005. The OMB is in charge of overseeing the preparation of the president’s budget, so it was in a position to require all U.S. agencies to report the requested information.

That 2006 report was an eye-opener. The OMB calculated that U.S. contributions totaled $4.115 billion in 2004 and $5.327 billion in 2005. By comparison, the State Department had estimated 2004 contributions at “well over $3 billion” — far short of the actual amount reported by the OMB.

Five years later, the OMB reported that FY 2010 contributions the U.N. system exceeded $7.691 billion — more than $1.3 billion higher than the previous record, set the year before.  Indeed, 2010 marked the third consecutive year in which U.S. contributions had reached a new high.

Unfortunately, the mandate requiring the OMB to report on U.S. contributions to the U.N. system expired in 2011, and the Obama administration has chosen not to report this information since then. As a result, there is no comprehensive accounting of U.S. contributions to the U.N. system for FY 2011 or FY 2012. Nor will we know how much will be spent this year or in the future, unless Congress renews the OMB report mandate.

Republicans Senator Mike Lee and Representative Mo Brooks have introduced legislation to fix this lapse. Whether you favor cutting U.S. contributions to the U.N. or increasing them, everyone should agree that good governance requires that the U.S. accurately track and report those contributions to Congress and the public.  

Another Great Report via: National Review