http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=242597WASHINGTON – Ever wonder where your tax dollars are going?
How about upkeep for a pink, octagonal monkey house in Dayton, Ohio, that hasn't been occupied for years? The Department of Veterans Affairs is spending $175 million each year to maintain buildings it does not use, according to Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.
Or $41,000 for a toilet? Uncle Sam paid $1.49 million to replace 36 malodorous chemical toilets with a "sweet smelling toilet facility" in Denali National Park in Alaska.
Coburn just released his latest report on wasteful government spending, identifying billions of taxpayer dollars being thrown away by the federal government.
The "Wastebook: A Guide to Some of the Most Wasteful Government Spending of 2010," identifies 100 examples of pointless waste, theft, mismanagement and abuse in federal spending. The total cost to taxpayers? $11.5 billion, and Coburn acknowledges that's only the tip of the iceberg.
"Examples like these are too numerous to count," writes Coburn. "Worse yet, they are costing us billions even as we borrow huge sums just to keep the government operating at a basic level."
Coburn's solution? Cut spending and borrowing.
"The need to cut back federal spending is obvious: there simply is not enough money to pay for everything the government is doing," writes Coburn. "Excessive borrowing and spending has driven the national debt to a staggering $13.8 trillion. Last year alone, the government spent well over $1 trillion more than it collected in taxes."
According to Coburn, the U.S. government is "borrowing over $44,000 for every person in the country."
"One of the goals of this report is to serve as a wake-up call for Congress and to create an awareness among the American people about how their hard-earned money is being wasted by exposing the incompetency of the federal government," said Becky Bernhardt, Coburn's deputy press secretary.
The Wastebook's examples of misspending range from the mundane (nearly $1.8 billion in unnecessary document printing by federal office workers) to the exotic ($823,200 to teach South African men how to wash their genitals after sex in hope of preventing the spread of AIDS).
The biggest ticket item is $6 billion for ethanol subsidies, when ethanol can damage automobile engines, drives gas mileage down and drives the cost of corn up, according to the report.
Perhaps the most instructive item is Shreveport, La. spending $1.5 million in federal stimulus money to remove mold from an apartment complex the city plans to tear down. Federal budgetary practices create a perverse incentive to spend any allocated money before the end of a given fiscal year, lest the budget be reduced the following year. Shreveport was warned by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to spend its stimulus money by the deadline or see the money rescinded.
On to fraud and theft: $112 million went to fraudulent income tax returns filed by people incarcerated in prison, and $35 million went to fraudulent reimbursement claims for medical testing by "phantom" medical clinics.
Medicare "loses an estimated $60 billion in taxpayer funds every year to waste, fraud and abuse," according to Coburn. He discloses that after federal prosecutors set up a "fraud-fighting strike force" in South Florida, Medicare bills for wheelchairs and other medical supplies fell by 63 percent, or $1.7 billion, in a year.
Luxury travel is a common federal expenditure: $465,000 to send people to an AIDS conference in Vienna; $177,746 to send Massachusetts teachers to China to study the Chinese education system; $50,000 to send about a dozen mayors to Stockholm for an environmental conference; $100,000 to send curators to a architecture exhibition in Venice.
Mismanagement? How about $1.5 billion in extra costs for the Joint Strike Fighter? In 2001, the government planned to purchase 2,800 new jets for $231 billion; now the projected costs are $323 billion for 2,400 planes, because of exorbitant cost overruns.
And, of course, simple waste: $44 million for a National Drug Intelligence Center that duplicates the work done by other facilities; $47.6 million for an Atlanta streetcar line that covers a route already served by a subway; $4.2 million for overlapping shuttlebus routes between federal agencies in Washington, D.C.; $150,045 to refurbish another "Bridge to Nowhere," a New Hampshire covered bridge that does not connect to any roads.
"The results of the election signified the clear message sent by the American people that it is time for politicians to make hard choices and live within our means," said Bernhardt. "Dr. Coburn is hopeful that incoming members will join together and realize the urgency of our financial situation and make eliminating wasteful spending a top priority."
Topic: The $41,000 toilet you paid for (Read 1196 times)