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Redstate...
Coburn
Details $7 Billion in Waste
from 100 Dumb Projects
Posted by Daniel Horowitz
Wednesday, December 21st
At
some point we will need to go
beyond merely cutting waste, fraud, and abuse.
We will eventually have to wind down the
welfare state and close
government departments and agencies.
However, there is no reason we shouldn’t
demand an immediate bipartisan
effort to eliminate programs that are just plain dumb, even according
to
Democrat socialist ideology.
Nobody
has been more assiduous and
instrumental in identifying silly government projects than Senator Tom
Coburn. Yesterday,
Senator Coburn
released his annual “Wastebook” profiling 100 “unnecessary,
duplicative, or
just plain stupid projects spread throughout the federal government.”
The total
cost of these programs is $6.9 billion.
Cutting these programs would only account for
roughly 40 hours of our
debt, but why spend a penny on this stuff?
Here
are some of the greatest hits:
$120
million in retirement and disability
benefits to federal employees who have died
$30
million to help Pakistani Mango
farmers
$550,000
for a documentary about how
rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union
$10
million for a remake of “Sesame
Street” for Pakistan
$764,825
to examine how college
students use mobile devices for social networking.
$113,227
for a video game preservation
center in New York
$765,828
to subsidize a “pancakes for
yuppies” program in Washington, D.C.
$100,000
for a celebrity chef show in
Indonesia
$175,587
for a study on the link
between cocaine and the mating habits of quail
$606,000
for a study about online
dating
$17.80
Million in Foreign Aid to…
China – (Department of State & U.S. Agency for International
Development)
The
Super-Bridge to Nowhere – (Alaska)
$15.3 Million
Yes,
this is mere pocket change; we
will not balance the budget by eliminating these preposterous projects. Nevertheless, they reveal
just how apathetic
our lawmakers are in handling public funds.
They are also emblematic of the ridiculous
budget process that has been
in place in recent years. If
we are
going to pass 1200-page bills that fund the entire government with such
short
notice, we will invariably continue to fund these projects.
Coburn’s
report gives us another 100
reasons why we should never pass omnibus bills.
Read
this and other columns at Redstate
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