This appeared here and I would like to thank Alan for
allowing me to publish his work. RK
I frequently marvel that a loon like Nancy Pelosi could
have become Speaker of the House and is currently the House minority leader.
Recently she said, “The cupboard is bare. There’s no more cuts to make. It’s
really important that people understand that. We cannot have cuts just for the
sake of cuts.
This is dishonesty on a galactic scale. It also provides
an insight into why, short of the mandatory sequestration that went into effect
last year when Congress could not come to any agreement on any cuts, the
government continues to spend money in ways that are just short of criminal.
In July, a Rasmussen poll determined that 62% of likely
voters thought the government should cut spending in response to the nation’s
economic problems. That percentage was actually down from the previous month’s
65% and was the lowest support for reduced spending since August 2012.
That same month, a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll revealed
that 83% of Americans disapproved of the job performance of Congress. Approval
of President Obama’s job performance was closely divided between 45% approval
and 50% disapproval.
There are any number of think tanks and citizen’s
organizations that keep tabs on government spending, but their periodic reports
and news release seem to have no impact whatever. That’s something that members
of Congress and others inside the Beltway know.
At a time when Republicans and Democrats will lock horns
over raising the debt ceiling and the President thinks that any effort to
defund the Affordable Care Act is the result of the Republicans “messing with
me” and not a reflection of how widely disliked Obamacare is, it is instructive
to look at just a few of the ways public funding is being regularly and
routinely squandered in ways that are obscene.
As just one small example, one good way to save taxpayer
dollars would be to shut down the National Science Foundation (NSF). It is
spending $5.7 million on a project to develop card games, videos and other
“educational” programs “to engage adult learners and inform public
understanding and response to climate change.” The Climate Change Educational
Partnership (CCEP) was established by Congress in 2009 and, to date, it has
already spent $46 million on the “threat” of something that doesn’t even exist,
global warming.
One of the NSF’s grants went to a study of what motivates
workers, love or money? It cost $179,784. Another NSF grant, $2.25 on Tasmanian
Devil facial tumors. This is an animal native to an island off the coast of
Australia nowhere else. Part of another a half-million dollar grant was used to
develop a video game the stimulated a high school prom. The NSF funded $350,000
to Purdue University to study how golfers could improve their game.
The NSF may take top honors for insanely wasteful
programs and projects, but there is hardly a single department of the
government that does not do the same thing. All that whining and wailing about
sequestration was really about having fewer dollars to waste and fewer people
with which to waste it.
For example, the Transportation Security Administration
lets 5,700 pieces of unused security equipment sit in storage in a Dallas,
Texas warehouse. Worth $184 million, it costs the TSA $3.5 million annually to
lease the space.
As Obamacare expands the role of the Internal Revenue
Service and we learn how some of its administrators targeted, denying or
delaying, a common tax-exempt status to conservative groups routinely granted
to all manner of other kinds of organizations, let us not forget the $4.1
million the IRS spent in 2010 on a lavish conference for employees.
The Department of Agriculture awarded a $149,000 grant to
researchers at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey to study how to
eliminate the “freshman 15” extra weight that these students pack on when they
can eat anything and as much as they want.
Morocco must have one heck of a good lobbyist because the
Labor Department spent $1 million there to improve “gender equality” in the
workforce there. The State Department spent $450,000 to develop “green jobs.”
Dave Ramsey, who advises people on radio, TV and in print
on how to manage their personal finances, has said, “The fact is that
government can get out of debt the same way you get out of debt. You quit
borrowing money. You quit spending. You balance the budget. But to do all of
that, you’ll need to make some sacrifices.”
The only reason sequestration went into effect was
because a blue-ribbon panel of members of Congress could not agree to any
reductions in spending.
Now we must endure a few weeks of meaningless political
haggling to increase the debt ceiling while the government continues its orgy
of senseless spending on projects and programs like those noted above.
© Alan Caruba, 2013
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