Citizens Against Government Waste America's #1 Taxpayer Watchdog

After much fanfare surrounding its introduction in January, the Congressional five-day workweek has been quietly retired for the rest of the legislative year.  The House will have Fridays off in October so representatives can spend more time in their districts – the week already begins late Monday afternoons – yet while the year is winding down, the workload is gearing up.  None of the 12 appropriations bills, which were due before the start of the fiscal year on October 1, have been completed as of publication.  The President has vowed to veto most of them for going over budget; so far the bills exceed the President’s request by $22 billion.

When many Americans think of Europe, they conjure up images of slow-moving socialist bureaucracies.  While this type of government may exist in some countries, there is a growing free market and taxpayer movement spreading throughout the continent.

The I-35 Bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which resulted in the deaths of 13 people, dominated several news cycles and gave politicians the kind of somber photo ops they can rarely resist.  Some, including House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), called for an increase in the federal gas tax to pay for the long-standing unmet need for bridge repair.  Congress went back to business as usual, earmarking billions of tax dollars for frivolous projects in the Senate Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations bill.

Some times you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.  In the case of Coconut Road in Florida, even though a member of Congress felt like wasting taxpayer dollars on a highway interchange project at Coconut Road and I-75, taxpayers in Lee County, Florida did not want and the Lee County Metropolitan Planning Commission eventually voted against.