This Week In Waste – October 3, 2025
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.
The Schumer Shutdown Is Absurd, and a Clean CR is Essential
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is making absurd demands to increase spending by $1.5 trillion, leading to the government shutdown. President Trump and Republicans in Congress are displaying common sense and doing what is best for taxpayers by keeping spending at current levels with a clean continuing resolution. Read more here.
CAGW Files Comments to FCC on Accelerating Network Modernization
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s outdated copper network regulations force carriers to maintain aging, vulnerable infrastructure despite 95 percent of customers having already switched to newer technologies. On September 29, 2025, CAGW urged the FCC to eliminate burdensome reporting and maintenance requirements that block network modernization, expose infrastructure to copper theft, and waste resources that should go toward building faster and safer communications systems. Read more here.
Deregulation Keeps U.S. Air Travel Flying High
Through purposeful and consistent deregulatory efforts, U.S. air travel has become more affordable and accessible, with average fares having fallen from $611 to $397 and passenger volume risen 38 percent from January 2022 to January 2025. Government-mandated unnecessary refunds and fee restrictions that were imposed during the Biden administration threaten to reverse this progress by raising base fares and stifling airlines’ activity and should be rejected by Congress. Read more here.
Senate HELP Committee Questions Cleveland Clinic’s 340B Funding Transparency
Between 2014 and 2023, the 340B Drug Discount Program ballooned from $9 billion to $66 billion. An April 2025 Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee staff report found that institutions like Cleveland Clinic failed to pass savings from the program to their low-income patients, instead directing funds toward executive pay and vague “capital improvement projects.” Rather than providing patients with drug discounts, 340B has become a “reverse Robin Hood” program that enriches hospitals in wealthy communities at the expense of lower income communities and taxpayers. Read more here.
FCC Acts to Eliminate Wasteful E-Rate Spending
On September 30, 2025, the FCC adopted two declaratory rulings to eliminate two wasteful and costly E-Rate programs, which provide funding to schools and libraries to obtain internet access through the Universal Service Fund. The rulings rolled back the COVID-era expansion of the E-Rate program that provided off-campus Wi-Fi hotspots using these funds and overturned an October 19, 2023, ruling to use E-Rate funding to put Wi-Fi in school buses across the country. Read more here.
President Trump Can Cut Wasteful Spending to Reduce Drug Prices and Healthcare Costs
President Trump’s priorities for his second term include lowering drug prices and reducing healthcare costs for Americans while encouraging more biopharmaceutical investment and innovation in the U.S. CAGW suggests that he can achieve both objectives without imposing price controls, which includes Most Favored Nation (MFN) polices; but by reforming the 340B Drug Discount Program and eliminating the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). Read more here.
$2.2 Billion Solar Plant in California Scheduled to Be Turned Off After Years of Waste
Once hailed as a symbol of green energy innovation, the $2.2 billion taxpayer-backed Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert will shut down in 2026 after underdelivering on energy output, while relying on natural gas. Ivanpah is a costly example of how government-subsidized energy projects waste public funds on inefficient technologies. Read more here.
