The federal government took in $3.02 trillion in total
revenue this year, but still managed to run a deficit of $483 billion — and
that was the lowest deficit since 2007.
The country's national debt is now nearly $18 trillion. Yet
the Heritage Foundation had no trouble citing 51 examples of government waste
due to mismanagement, corporate welfare, or questionable federal research
alone.
Here's a dirty dozen of those examples:
1. Two federal construction projects to deal with nuclear
fuel and waste, which were supposed to cost $4 billion, remain uncompleted and
have already cost $7 billion.
2. Construction of the Department of Homeland Security
headquarters was supposed to be complete by 2003. It remains far from
completion and has already cost taxpayers nearly $4.5 billion.
3. The Department of the Treasury paid $112 million to a
public relations firm to raise public awareness of the new dollar bill's minor
design changes.
4. The Defense Department spent nearly $500 million on
military transport planes for the Afghan Air Force, a project that was scrapped
partly because maintenance of the planes was too expensive for the Afghans.
5. Medicare Part B spent nearly six times more than Medicare
Part D for the same drugs and equipment to treat cancer.
6. The U.S. Enrichment Corporation received $60 million from
the federal government even though the company announced plans to declare
bankruptcy.
7. The Defense Department is destroying $1.2 billion worth
of ammunition because it does not have a suitable inventory system to track
supplies. The military services each use different inventory systems.
8. Federal agencies paid almost $50 million to the
Department of Commerce's National Technical Information Service for information
that is mostly available for free online.
9. The Government Accountability Office reports that
duplication of federal programs and services costs taxpayers an astounding $45
billion a year.
10. According to the Environmental Protection Agency
Inspector General, EPA employees used government credit cards to buy $79,000
worth of "prohibited, improper, and erroneous" goods and services,
including gym memberships for workers and their families, DVDs, and academic
memberships.
11. The National Institutes of Health spent $374,000 to find
out if preschoolers will eat more vegetables after watching a puppet show about
fruits and vegetables.
12. The NIH also spent $371,000 to determine if mothers have
the same neurological reaction when looking at pictures of their children and
of their dogs.
To put the massive overspending in perspective, the Heritage
Foundation's Romina Boccia correlated the federal spending to a typical
American family's budget.
The median family income in the U.S. is $52,000. If the
family spent money like the federal government, they would spend $60,400 this
year, putting $8,400 on their credit card — even though they already have
credit card debt of $308,000.
Source:
Heritage.Org
Comments
The federal
government has spent an extra $1 trillion a year on grants to states for UN
Agenda 21 implementation and other bribes to foreign governments.
Norb Leahy,
Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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