10 Dubious Government
Expenditures That Are More Costly Than Trump’s Border Wall Despite many Democrats not believing that
President Donald Trump would go through with building his talked-about wall on
the southern border of the United States, it now seems that the barrier is
likely to be built, and sooner rather than later. But for all the heated debate
about the expense of the wall, there are actually numerous budget items the
government currently funds which are in many cases considerably more expensive
than the wall’s projected cost. Here’s a list of ten such items that the
government clearly has no trouble paying for:
The War on Poverty
The war on poverty
isn’t cheap. In fact, if the government were a person, that person might well be
broke right now from fighting this war. “The War on Poverty” is actually a
catchphrase for a host of government programs initiated by Democratic President
Lyndon Johnson when he famously declared this conflict. However, 50 years after
the war was initiated and some $22 trillion later, the poverty rate in America
is virtually unchanged. And in case you were wondering, $22 trillion is enough
to pay for roughly 1,466 of Donald Trump’s border walls.
The F-35 Jet Program
This defense industry
boondoggle originally designed to produce a new jet fighter to replace the
armed forces’ aging inventory is out of control in about all the ways you can
think of: it’s over budget, long-delayed, far from the secret it was supposed
to be (reports are that China already has the jet’s plans), and beset with a
raft of problems from its complex software. The program, which should be the
poster child for how not to run a military requisition project, is already
budgeted at $379 billion, but by the time all F-35s are built that are
scheduled to be completed, the total might well come in at more than $1
trillion.
Running the Government
Every year, the
federal government spends about $3.8 trillion. If you break that figure down,
it comes to $10.4 billion per day, $432 million per hour and $7.2 million per
minute. At that cost, the border wall would be the equivalent of just one and a
half days of operating the government.
Improper Payments for
Medicaid and Medicare
The Government
Accountability Office (GAO) estimated in 2014 that there were approximately
$17.5 billion worth of improper Medicaid payments made and $59.9 billion in
improper Medicare payments, totaling $76.4 billion. When combined with other
government benefit programs, the total came out to $124.7 billion worth of improper
payments, up from $105.8 billion in 2014.
Maintaining Unused and
Vacant Property
Maintaining vacant
buildings and unused property cost the government $25 billion in 2009 according
to the Heritage Foundation. Currently, there’s a total of 1.186 billion square
feet of excess space in the administration’s possession, with federal buildings
that are worth billions of dollars just sitting around empty. The maintenance
alone for all this space is between three and four billion dollars per year.
The Littoral Combat
Ship
Cost overruns,
development problems and miscellaneous delays have cost the U.S. Navy a pretty
penny on the $29 billion Littoral Combat Ship program, which so far has built
prototypes of its new vessel in Marinette, Wisconsin and Mobile, Alabama. Members
of the Senate Armed Services Committee, including GOP Senator John McCain of
Arizona and Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island have criticized the
Navy for its missteps, and procurement of the ships is on hold until reform
action has been taken.
The Earned Income Tax
Credit
Improper payments to
the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) benefits program for taxpayers totaled
$15.6 billion in fiscal 2015, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector
General Tax Administration. This amount is roughly equivalent to the cost of
building one of Trump’s border walls.
The U.S. Postal
Service
The USPS is a
perennial money-loser that’s fallen on hard times in recent years as more
efficient ways to communicate have replaced “snail mail” for many people’s
needs. In 2012, the USPS’s loss was $15.9 billion. Although in the last four
years, this number has shrunk to $5.6 billion, the cumulative total of losses
since 2012 is $36 billion.
It should also go
without saying that the USPS is a government monopoly that’s exempt from taxes
and regulations that its private-sector competitors must pay and follow.
NASA
The National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) eats up $18.5 billion every year,
even though the last manned space flight was six years ago in 2011. A large
part of that number is $2 billion for the agency’s Earth sciences division,
responsible for much climate change research.
Even with its huge
budget, however, lately, NASA has been depending on the Russian space program
to get its astronauts to the International Space Station, a separate line item
with a nearly half-billion dollar expense alone in 2014.
Farm Subsidies
According to the Cato
Institute, the Department of Agriculture provides at least $25 billion in
subsidies to farmers in the U.S. Approximately a million farmers receive some
kind of subsidy, but the largest producers of cotton, rice, soybeans, corn and
wheat receive the lion’s share of the largess. Many of these commodity
producers are hardly in need of financial assistance, such as Walmart heirs
Rob, Jim and Alice Walton. Other recipients include CNN founder Ted Turner and
rock musicians Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi.
American Liberty
Report
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