Fed up with excessive government spending, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW), Americans for Prosperity, the 60 Plus Association, Concerned Women for America, and AmericaSpeakOn.org have joined forces to create a new website, www.spendingrevolt.com and go on a multi-state bus tour to educate and activate taxpayers. The wake-up tour is intended to arm Americans with facts and figures about government spending so they can change their spending habits in Washington.The busmeasures 70 feet long and has space for people to write “personal messages” to their elected officials.
Creating More Federal Employees
The debt of our nation is soaring. The U.S. Government has spent more than $13 trillion above what it has taken in. The Obama Administration and Democratic majority in Congress have passed policies causing government to grow faster than ever adding more than $1.4 trillion in additional debt this fiscal year alone.
The Fannie and Freddie Meltdown: Picking Up PACE
On September 6, 2008, the nation’s two largest housing government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken under conservatorship by the U.S. Treasury.
Flood Insurance Still Soaks the Taxpayer
In early July, politicians in Washington, D.C. missed an opportunity to improve the failing National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) when Congress passed another short-term reauthorization that expires on September 30, 2010. A second bite at the apple was even more misguided when on July 15, 2010, the House passed H.R. 5114, the Flood Insurance Reform Priorities Act, a five-year reauthorization of the NFIP, which expanded the program.
Government Acquisition Waste
When purchasing necessary items, the government buys from private businesses, both large and small. For contracts greater than $100,000, companies go through a convoluted and highly regulated bidding process, which allows losing bidders to file a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The protest filing procedures are complicated and costly. Although the number of […]
Making Fiscal Sense in New Jersey
Politicians frequently stand on soapboxes and tell voters what they want to hear, but often fail to back their words up with action after they are elected. President Obama did this during the 2008 presidential race when he promised that people would be able to keep their doctor if healthcare reform passed and assuredeveryone making less than $250,000 thatthey would not be hit with any new tax increases. Now that the healthcare bill has passed,citizens are discovering that that their doctors are dropping private insurers and most taxpayers will have to pay moreto provide health benefits for everybody.
GM’s “Claims” of Repayment
During the economic crisis that unfolded over the last few years, the federal government became the lender of the last resort, not because it had any money, but because it had the ability to borrow money on behalf of the taxpayers to lend to struggling businesses.
Robbing Peter to Pay Paul – Trying to Track Stimulus Money Robs Oversight of Other Federal Spending
By now, news stories related to the difficulty in tracking expenditures related to the “stimulus” spending package, or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), and estimating jobs “created,” “retained,” or simply “funded” by the bill are legion, legendary; old news, in fact. President Obama swore that his administration would track “every dime” of the $862 billion spending bill. The federal government dedicated an $18 million website, www.recovery.gov., to the task of chasing down the dollars.
It is Time to Deflate Federal Salaries
A recent trend in Washington, D.C. is to spend enormous amounts of taxpayer money on programs that politicians sell to the public as absolutely necessary and important. That approach led to swift passage of the $700 billion TARP program, the $862 billion stimulus program and the $300 billion mortgage assistance program. These programs have been expensive, ineffective and inefficient while all paid for with money the government had to borrow from taxpayers, as well as their children and grandchildren.
Sex, Drugs and BlackBerrys
On the stimulus package’s one-year anniversary on Feb. 17, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stated that taxpayers had “gotten their money’s worth.” However, it is difficult to understand how multimillion-dollar “stimulus” programs that research methamphetamine’s effects on rats, build turtle crossings under highways, put up roadside signs to advertise stimulus programs and produce few long-term jobs are effective uses of taxpayer dollars. In Washington, $977,346 is being spent on a program that will provide just one job and give a few hundred BlackBerrys to smokers to help them kick the habit.