The mantra of Boehner, et al, cut spending – well, ask yourself how much of the following did the Republican leadership oppose? How much of it were they responsible for? Then ask yourself why we should support any of them – more importantly ask yourself will any of the presidential candidates be different or will they silently support this kind of spending? You can read the full report by clicking on link at end of report or by pasting URL into your browser.
Dec 20 2011
Dr. Coburn Releases New Report on Wasteful Government Spending in 2011: “Wastebook 2011″
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) today released a new oversight report, “Wastebook 2011” that highlights over $6.5 billion in examples of some of the most egregious ways your taxpayer dollars were wasted. This report details 100 of the countless unnecessary, duplicative and low-priority projects spread throughout the federal government.
“Video games, robot dragons, Christmas trees, and magic museums. This is not a Christmas wish list, these are just some of the ways the federal government spent your tax dollars. Over the past 12 months, politicians argued, debated and lamented about how to reign in the federal government’s out of control spending. All the while, Washington was on a shopping binge, spending money we do not have on things we do not absolutely need. Instead of cutting wasteful spending, nearly $2.5 billion was added each day in 2011 to our national debt, which now exceeds $15 trillion,” Dr. Coburn said.
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“Congress cannot even agree on a plan to pay for the costs of extending jobless benefits to the millions of Americans who are still out of work. Yet, thousands of millionaires are receiving unemployment benefits and billions of dollars of improper payments of unemployment insurance are being made to individuals with jobs and others who do not qualify. And remember those infamous bridges to nowhere in Alaska that became symbols of government waste years ago? The bridges were never built, yet the federal government still spent more than a million dollars just this year to pay for staff to promote one of the bridges.”
Examples of wasteful spending highlighted in “Wastebook 2011” include:
• $75,000 to promote awareness about the role Michigan plays in producing Christmas trees & poinsettias.
• $15.3 million for one of the infamous Bridges to Nowhere in Alaska.
• $113,227 for video game preservation center in New York.
• $550,000 for a documentary about how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
• $48,700 for 2nd annual Hawaii Chocolate Festival, to promote Hawaii’s chocolate industry.
• $350,000 to support an International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy.
• $10 million for a remake of “Sesame Street” for Pakistan.
• $35 million allocated for political party conventions in 2012.
• $765,828 to subsidize “pancakes for yuppies” in the nation’s capital.
• $764,825 to study how college students use mobile devices for social networking.
Read the full report: here
http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/6946d43b-bccf-4579-990e-15a763532b40.html
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First, Boehner is a RINO and anyone in the House that votes for him during the next election for the House Majority Leader is also a RINO.
We are at “WAR” with those that believe in communism, socialism, Marxism, Progressive ideals, liberal, “pure” Shariah/Islamic law/finance, one-world-order, a world Caliphate, political correctness (cultural Marxism) and others that make up the “new” Democrat Party. We are also at war with the RINOs of the Republican Party that continue spending above and beyond the limits stipulated in the Constitution Article 1, Section 8, Clauses 1-18.
When you go to war, you find a leader that has been trained in war and is seasoned, that person is Allen West. He is a seasoned warrior and he can direct the House committees to develop their plan on how we are going to return this nation to a sound financial condition and eliminate the unconstitutional agencies, departments, programs along with identifying and fighting our enemy that wants a world Caliphate, a one-world-order.
We need an action plan and milestone chart on the sequence these laws and executive orders must be overturned.
Presidents from both parties have used executive orders to get their ideas into existence, similar to a dictatorship. We must eliminate the CZAR concept of management that Obama seems to love on his march to a Marxist state.
frank livingston: I agree w/ you about leadership…but allen is pro-abortion…that isn’t a position I can support…
Fear not, folks. When TSHTF these clowns will be running for the exits and all we will see will be elbows and …….., well, you know the rest. The rats know when it’s time to leave the ship!, and
I say Aloha, old Kahunas………………..
stormrider900: lol…agreed…
The term ‘clean house’ comes to mind.
rodney r. stubbs: amen, amen, and amen…
SAW THE TEARS AND THE HANKY AND WAS NOT IMPRESSED. WE NEED HARD CORE MEN TO DO THEIR JOBS!!!! THEY NEED NOT TO GET MAD…THEY NEED TO GET EVEN…AND NO TEARY BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!!!!!!!
AND YES…REAL MEN DO CRY…BUT NOT ON TV AT ELECTION TIME…IF YOU ARE SO OVER WHELMED BY JUST DOING YOUR JOB…WELL?
josie: they need to do their jobs…and they need to make significant cuts to spending…doing their jobs isn’t based on popularity w/ the media…
Just for laughs — Solomon received 666 talents of gold every year. That equates to about 25 tons. At today’s market price for gold, $1600/oz., that would be about $1 trillion, 280 billion a year. Where is Solomon when we need him? (Being sure his 700 wives and 300 concubines get their hair and nails done.)
There is another Republican who understands what is needed. Rand Paul (R-KY). He is pro-gun for one thing. He also challanges Pro-Choice politicians when at the same time, they don’t agree to pro-The People. His new Gov’t approved toilet does not work. He asked a committee of pro-choicers why they believed in pro-choice but have put out demands for The People to buy toilets that don’t work. “Shouldn’t that be The Peoples’ choice to decided what equipment and fixtures to use in their private homes?” That aside, It’s not all Republicans who are one brick shy. The Democrats have used U.S. tax dollars to fund many projects like why frog urine may cause warts. U.S. tax dollars are wasted everyday in the Oval Office, House and Congress. It is way past time to hold each and every elected politician accountable for their nonsense use of American tax dollars. Another over-use of American tax dollars are 22 assistants for Michelle Obama. Why does it take that many assistants for a First Lady? How about Pelosi’s trips to and from CA using our tax dollars for her use of jets to transport the Twit? How about the trip to England to Visit the Queen – That one trip alone was totally unacceptable with various planes carrying bullet-proof limo, selected Obama Chefs, Security up the ying-yang… You want to talk about waste of American tax dollars, we have plenty of it from both parties. Now, we have cell phone use in moving vehicles under attack by the “National Security..” What business is it of Federal agency to determine American’s cell phone use? The tests (what tests?) made by the Feds was money misused and absolutely none of their business! This kind of issue should be State Issue NEVER Federal Issue. Better yet, talk about tax money being squandered…The Federal Government is tromping on Sheriff Joe and his Deputies for trying to up-hold Arizona’s laws. Homeland Security has stepped in because they can by decree of President Obama. More American tax dollars poured down a drainage pipe. “To destroy a Society, you have to destroy their money.” Are we there yet?
Why in the H… don’t these Republician candidates stop attacking each other and all spend the rest of their campaign money seeing who can do the most to reveal and explain clearly what the progressives and their messiah’s agenda are doing to destroy our coountry?
The facts are there in front of them to make anyone with half a brain realize we can not go on like this. Take off the politically correct gloves and Brave up, Man up, and Stand up like Mychal just said.
So the talking points should center around the battle cry of:
“It’s the AGENDA….Stupid!!”
Is this or is it not the most important election in our life time?
Mychal – How much of this did the Democratic leadership oppose? It’s not only Republicans, but Democrats and most everyone in Congress that is spending the money.
My last day of active duty in the Army, my missile battery received two 5 ton trucks of palm trees and hibiscus plants. My troops had to dig 3′ diameter by 4′ deep holes in hardened coral and fill them with dirt to plant them.
Same reason as above, if we didn’t spend the money, we wouldn’t get as much next year. Complaining did no good. I opened my stupid mouth to say something and was ordered “to quit complaining and plant the damn trees”.
Everyone agreed that it was a waste of time, money and effort, but no one tried to do anything about it. I’ve visited where the missile battery was located. It’s gone now and none of the plants or trees made it.
Do you wonder where the government is going to waste the money costing us in Iraq that we won’t be spending now that we are leaving? You can bet it won’t be to pay down the debt or reduce spending.
Same thing happened after Nam. Not a dime was reduced from the growing debt.
Your CC was also removed for this if I remember correctly. The trees died from lack of water in the desert; Right? Progressives and liberals Bigwigs still using the military as a social experiment, it disgusts me…
pe: not sure what the cc was you refer to…but I agree w/ you per the destructive heterodoxy being forced upon our military…
It’s an odd, backasswords phenomenon, in that each time the illiterates win, America loses.
We need more Bunch Quitters like Mychal. Fearless, independent thinkers and doers who give back to their community and are beholden to no one but God.
In my Navy Corpsmen days I was senior NCO in the emergency room when it was announced we were getting CARPET…(remember Emergency Room where patients vomit etc). We did not have a portable defibrilator unit. So I ran it up chain of command to change the purchase to a portable defib. the CO called me and we met, where he explained the money came from Washington and was designated outside our command. There would be no changing, no matter how wise or necessary my request was. Further more we would take the carpet, because if we did not take the money this year we obviously did not need the money and would not receive such funds next year.
Mychal – NO PROFITABLE business can survive making such decisions… No government can survine either. We will devour ourselves. I am voting against every incumbent I can.
In Christ
Dennis McCutcheon
PS.. within 24 hours of carpet installation my ER stunk from urine and vomit in the new carpet… 40 years later I am still ticked off.
Dan,
Your analogy is a good one.
Strange that as intelligent as most people believe they are that no one, or at least those who would have some authority to divert certain disaster, seem so inept and irresponsible at seeking solutions.
During the cold war when the same intelligent people were facing the real possibility of being blown to bits or fried alive everyone had ideas for survival. Build a stronger defense with more retaliatory capability, dig bomb shelters, flea into the desert or the mountains with all the provisions you can carry. The pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still in the minds of everyone vividly told of the horror that could await them. This is different.
We don’t have the proof in pictures of their cities and a great and flourishing nation collapsing before their very eyes with folks in panic running in every direction to avoid either law enforcement or angry mobs of rioters. They can’t imagine closed groceries, gas stations, and malls due to lack of deliveries or (God forbid) as a result of mob violence. What in the world will they do when the electricity isn’t working and the internet is shutdown?
All of this and more is quite possible when the chain runs out.
Thank you, Bill. I have never been fatalistic with respect to what is reported on the financial news because I was aware of how it fit into the bigger scheme of things and understood it to be a political angle and little more.
This time is different, and you’re right about the naivete. The part that sickens me is that it didn’t/wouldn’t have to be this way, but when leadership behaves as if there’s a Santa Claus, an Easter Bunny, or a Tooth Fairy the results are predictable.
dan bubalo: amen…
I have worked in finance most of my adult life and have difficulty wrapping my brain around the numbers bandied about————not only with the feckless spending above, but with the enormity of the debt. If it gives me pause to actually have to calculate, you may be assured that neither Congress nor obama have a clue how deep a hole they have dug.
If you care for an ugly visual, it’s as if we’re standing on a cliff with a huge weight shackled to our ankle with a hundred foot chain. The weight has been tossed over the side and nothing happens, but that is no reason to smile smugly. When we’re out of chain we’re going over the edge, and that is exactly where we are right now. It’s no longer a matter of if, but a matter of when.
A mere 3 years the debt as a percentage of GDP (income) was roughly half, which is a very manageable debt despite how it would become a hot potato with the press when it moved them to create news. NOW, when is not just a hot potato but a hot-wired bomb, obama wants to parade out people “deprived” of pizza delivery, Boehner didn’t want to give him that political “opportunity”, and the media is choosing sides and not addressing the fiscal and hard reality that we are on the brink, and make no mistake, we are there.
There is one Republican who understands what is needed. Paul Ryan.
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/larrykudlow/2011/12/23/creators_oped
Sure didn’t take the professional politicians long to go through the raise in the debt limit did it? Now we’re going to raise it another trillion dollars to spend on getting elected again next year. It never ends.
sumitch: we can stop this madness…we just need enough people to stand up to the machine…I am convinced our greatest enemy is not the worthless politicians…it is the gullible naive people who re-elect them or send more like them to replace the losers already there…