This Week In Waste – August 7, 2026
Welcome to This Week in Waste, a series by Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) that highlights how taxpayer dollars are being wasted in the federal, state, and local levels of government and efforts to fight back against this spendthrift behavior.
CBO Confirms IRA Drug Negotiations Raised Costs for Taxpayers
A July 29, 2026, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) letter estimates that the Medicare drug pricing negotiation provisions included in the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act cost $700 billion instead of saving $129 billion from 2022-2031 as originally projected. The CBO mea culpa adds to the plethora of evidence that price controls on pharmaceuticals increase rather than lower costs for patients and limit access to vital medications. Read more here.
Permitting Reform Is Key to BEAD Success
An August 5, 2026, report from the Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute that reviewed a total of 2,942,440 funded locations and included 3,783 terrestrial projects across the nation explains why permitting reform is critical to the success of the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. CAGW has long been concerned that burdensome, duplicative, extraneous permitting processes could delay deployment in areas receiving federal BEAD dollars. Read more here.
Basic Economics Show Why Mamdani’s Socialist Grocery Stores in NYC Are Destined to Fail
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to spend $70 million on five government-backed grocery stores that will not provide as a “solution” to food deserts and availability of grocery stores will exacerbate underlying issues by underpricing taxpayer-subsidized stores. The city instead must eliminate the regulations that make it nearly impossible for large stores to be established and offer consumers a wide variety of goods at lower prices. Read more here.
Newsom Blamed Trump for High-Speed Rail’s $4 Billion Funding Cut. Records Show California Never Bought the Trains it Promised
As of July 2025, California’s failed high-speed rail project spent $15 billion over 16 years, and its budget grew to $135 billion from the 2008 estimate of $33 billion, prompting the Trump administration to pull $4 billion in funding and question the project’s viability, causing a backlash from California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), who has continued to push the project forward despite its high cost and low yield to taxpayers. The California rail authority broke yet another promise to award a train contract, due by December 1, 2025, asking taxpayers to continue bankrolling a project plagued by delays, poor oversight, and broken promises. Read more here.
FCC Returns $881 Million in Unused TV Broadcaster Relocation Funds
On August 5, 2026, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced that the agency was returning to the U.S. Treasury $881 million in unused funds from the TV Broadcaster Relocation Fund following the conclusion of the first-ever spectrum Incentive Auction. Read more here.
