Many Americans are no doubt making resolutions to eliminate their bad habits in the New Year. The federal government would be well advised to do the same. President Obama and members of Congress could start by reviewing the jaw-dropping report put out by Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) outlining 100 examples — totaling more than $6.5 billion — of wasteful federal spending over the past year alone. What follows is a collection of some of the more outrageous examples.
● $120 million paid out in retirement and disability payments to deceased federal workers. According to the Inspector General of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, that’s in line with the annual average.
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● A $113,000 grant for video-game preservation awarded to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, an organization that “collects, studies, and interprets video games . . . and the ways in which electronic games are changing how people play, learn, and connect with each other, including across boundaries of culture and geography.”
● $17.8 million in aid to China, a country that currently holds U.S. debt in excess of $1.1 trillion. The aid package included $2.5 million for social services and $4.4 million for “green” initiatives and environmental-improvement programs.
● $10 million awarded by the U.S. Agency for International Development to a Pakistani arts organization to create “130 episodes of an indigenously produced Sesame Street.” The project, which will included characters such as Haseen O Jameel, “a conceited well-dwelling crocodile,” and Baily, “a hard-working donkey who longs to be a pop star,” is expected to receive $20 million over the next four years.
● A $147,000 grant to the American Museum of Magic in Marshall, Mich. The museum, which purports to “celebrate magicians and their magic,” intends to use the funds to “better understand its various audiences and their potential interest in the history of magic entertainment.”
● $49,000 awarded to the Hawaii Department of Agriculture in support of the 2012 Hawaii Chocolate Festival, which aims to “highlight the culinary talents and products specifically linked to Hawaii’s chocolate industry.” Last year’s festival goers were treated to a wide selection of chocolate-infused comestibles, including popsicles, vodka, and beer.
● $1 billion in tax credits for energy-efficient home improvements awarded to individuals who, according to a survey by the Treasury’s secretary general for tax administration, “had no record of owning a home.” Recipients included hundreds of prisoners, and children as young as three.
● A $176,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health awarded to the University of Kentucky to study the effects of cocaine on the sex drive of Japanese quail. The study, which began in 2010 and is scheduled to run through 2015, has already received more than $350,000 in federal funding.
● $96,000 in federal stimulus funding to purchase iPad 2 tablets for students in a Maine school district. When asked via an online survey whether the investment was worthwhile, 96 percent of local parents said no.
● $50,000 to the Oregon Cheese Guild, which plans to operate a statewide “Cheese Trail” connecting local farms and restaurants. The funds will go towards the production of 24 “video vignettes” featuring local farmers and experts expounding on the history of cheese.
● $1.4 million for an “entrepreneurship initiative” in the small Caribbean nation of Barbados. The USAID grant will help a local business school develop a curriculum focusing on “social” and “cultural” entrepreneurship, as well as “alternative energy initiatives.”
What is wonderful about the list (there should be a URL to connect to the entire report) is that a skilled writer could have created a satire about government expenditures but now without spending any extra dollars for it, the government has created the list for us.
Reading it aloud will be a great comic activity for my next party! It is will turn laughter to tears when people hear that the list is real.
The only thing jaw-dropping about 6.5 billion in wasteful spending is how small it is.
We're suffering from "big number syndrome" -- the numbers -- 500 million of this, 6 billion of that 500 billion of the other thing, 4 trillion of this -- they all are so big that it's hard to really categorize a number in isolation.
6.5 billion seems pretty big. Until you remember that every day the government takes in 6 billlion, spends about 10 billion and, thus, borrows about 4 billion.
So, unless Sen. Coburn can replicate that list of 6.5 billion wasted dollars about 250 times, it's worthless.
Our Congressmen are trying to bail out the Titanic with a bucket. Worse, they're pointing fingers at some deckhand who spilled a bucket as the cause of the problem, ignoring the iceberg and gaping hole in the ship that is entitlement spending.
Cloudbuster, you couldn't have written it better. I'd add that a lot of these expenses are not even wasteful so much as, why is the government spending on this? Couldn't these museums and festivals get private funding? These aren't proper government expenditures.
But there is always going to be this kind of nonsense going on and this is chicken feed compared to the real crisis we face (entitlements).
Wasteful indeed for the most part. However, you forgot to mention our huge "defense" budget which sucks up many more billions than some of these silly and stupid things you mention combined. Such as conducting naval exercises with the Indian Navy. For what?! Maintaining military training of various types for African Armies. For what?! And we are still in Afghanistan conducting our "Opium Wars" after 10 years.
A. Defense is one of the few things that Congress is MANDATED to spend on by the Constitution.
B. You think that a Nation such as ours should not train and equip with the best gear and should have something other than the best equipped and trained fighting forces? (I call that insane)
C. Training with those people whom we will be most likely called to act in concert with is logical and prudent. India and the Indian Ocean are quite important to the welfare of US commerce. Japan, England and Australia also....there is a reason we have treaties and agreements with these Nations.
making sure our defense dollars are not wasted is important but the "Military Industiral Complex" the hippies of the 60's worried about doesn't exist anymore, we are no longer spending 40 or 50% of our GDP in Defense....15 to 20% is NOT an unreasonable sum for our Government to spend on National Defense....especially since most of Europe actually depends on us defending them....if you want to make cuts, take it out of supporting nations that do not support us and our welfare.
"...but the "Military Industiral Complex" the hippies of the 60's worried about doesn't exist anymore..."
The Military Industrial Complex NEVER DID EXIST in the U.S.. President Eisenhower was simply warning us to not become like the Soviet Union, which had a real Military Industrial Complex. Yes, it was a real long shot possibility: Truman fought the impulse, Eisenhower certainly did, and many others did after him.
"...we are no longer spending 40 or 50% of our GDP in Defense....15 to 20% is NOT an unreasonable sum for our Government to spend on National Defense"
We never spent 40%. WW2 at most was 38%, Korea and the Cold war peaked at 14%, and Vietnam never exceeded 10%. And we complain now that Afghanistan and Iraq combined are less than 5% of our lagging economy! Frankly, we could afford a much bigger military on less than 10% GDP. We are getting a very effective military on much less.
This list opened my eyes to the effort required to waste our money. I must say I take a certain pride in our elected officials; they must work very late into the evening.
What is better--wasting money on projects that employ Americans and keep the money in our economy or projects that end up giving money to terrorists and corrupt Iraqi officials? Pallets of money just disappeared. And they still don't have functioning electrical, water and sewage systems. If you are going to be outraged, at least be outraged over the most outrageous things.
What's that old saying.."Two wrongs don't make a right"? Simply because the government spends gobs of money stupidly means that we should not look for savings anywhere? How very Democrat of you.
You would go nuts trying to find all the examples of this kind of silliness in the budget. The key is to use these examples to strike at budget functions, i.e. entire categories of spending, and thereby also limiting the power and scope of the federal government. But in the end you still have to take on entitlements.
Nearly all this spending is a result of earmarks. Sen. Coburn and Mr. Stiles have done us a great disservice by not naming each of the Congressmen responsible for those earmarks.
One thing that needs to be said is that basic research often has a much bigger payout than critics can foresee.
For example, many years ago I heard a radio program where people laughed at the Postal Service for wasting $7m on new glue research. After the chuckles ended the emcee mentioned the number of stamps that fell off in one year; a quick calculation showed that the postal customers lost $13m a year. We ended up with peel-off stamps - it was money well spent.
Scientific American once reported on a researcher who developed a better heart defibriator. His bio-mathematical model was developed by studying the sleep cycle of mosquitoes.
Senator Proxmire once gave his Golden Fleece award to a U.S. Naval Observatory in New Zealand. It turned out the facility was needed to better understand the Earth's rotation for the purpose of improving the guidance systems on balistic missiles. The NZ government then ordered the facility to be shuttered.
Remember the geologist whi identified the location of the rocks behind Osama bin Laden in his post-9/11 video? I'd bet he got some laughable grants so that he could do that.
So the cocaine addicted quails and the Nevada tree survey may actually have real value that exceeds the other items put together.
Small potatoes. Most government spending looks like waste to me. How bout the Dept of Education budget. How bout the Dept of Energy budget. the EPA. I could keep going. The only downside to eliminating these is you'll be dumping unemployable people into the job market.
Tree census in Henderson NV??!! I live there. It's in the desert. The only trees that exist here are those planted by someone.
You might also look into a massive repair job on an I-215/Eastern Ave. interchange which left the roadway still crumbling, but did a wonderful landscaping job.
Does anyone really think that funding agencies like the NIH can't come up research that needs funding that also wouldn't pass as least an initial smell test from the public at large? Is there really some dearth of worthwhile research ideas at US colleges and universities?
Case in point: the effects of cocaine on quail sexual practices. For a treatment with less scoffing and more actual analysis, see: External Link.
Odds are, if NIH funds something, it's after rejecting funding for many other projects, so if quail sex gets funded, I'm inclined to think that there's some good reason for studying quail sex, the scoffing of Senator Coburn (and Andrew Stiles) notwithstanding.
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