"Wastebook" report singles out $30B in federal spending

Interesting how government spends money on seemingly useless projects and some complain when other things get cut.

A recent report by U.S. Senator Tom Coburn outlines and highlights some of the mania.

I'm sure many people actually believe in these things and that it's all justified.

There are thousands of professional thieves, con artists, and hustlers of all kinds involved in something like this.

And we have to wonder about the "culture" that drives this.

oh and of course these examples are the small potatoes.

we all know the bigger ones don't we


from the "Introduction" page of the report....

Paid to Do Nothing – (Government wide) At least $400 million

It’s a Bird. It’s a Plane. It’s Superman! – (National Guard) $10 million

Uncle Sam Looking for Romance on the Web – (NEH) $914,000

Obama Administration Studies American’s Attitudes Towards Filibuster as Senate Majority Leader Eliminates the Longstanding Senate Right to Debate – (MO) $251,525

Beachfront Boondoggle: Taxpayer’s on the Hook for Paradise Island Homes – (HI) $500 million

Pimping the Tax Code – (NV) $17.5 million

Mass Destruction of Weapons – (DoD) $7 billion

Let Me Google That for You: National Technical Information Service – (Department of Commerce) $50 million

Millions Spent Building, Promoting an Insurance Plan Few Want and a Website that Doesn’t Work – (Department of Health and Human Services) At least $379 million

Cost of Unused Mega-Blimp Goes Up, Up and Away – (Army) $297 Million

"Wastebook" report singles out $30B in federal spending



The Report

reply to post by xuenchen

And we have to wonder about the "culture" that drives this.

It's called Political Apathy.

It happens when a whole nation stops paying attention for a few decades.

~Tenth

tothetenthpower
reply to post by xuenchen

 

And we have to wonder about the "culture" that drives this.

It's called Political Apathy.

It happens when a whole nation stops paying attention for a few decades.

~Tenth

I agree completely… it is getting hard to tell the difference in Political Apathy and just plain old Apathy though.

Obama Administration Studies American’s Attitudes Towards Filibuster as Senate Majority Leader Eliminates the Longstanding Senate Right to Debate – (MO) $251,525

That should scare the hell out of everyone.

Not so much as the dollar amount, but 'eliminating the right to debate'.

How about 400,000 dollar study to see if the Tea Party members were smart?

(the author is on Greta right now)

That $30,000,000,000 could have gone to NASA and allowed the USA to dominate space again. It would have put back to peak 1966 NASA budget.

But nope $30 billion wasted.

Another nail in the American coffin.

beezzer
How about 400,000 dollar study to see if the Tea Party members were smart?

(the author is on Greta right now)

Which proved they were smarter.

Page 127

The National Science Foundation Puts Tea Party Members’ Cognitive Abilities Under the Microscope… with Surprising Results – (CT) $398,990

No, Tea Partiers are not worse at science, according to the conclusions of one law professor who studied political identification and cognitive abilities using a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. In fact, identification with the Tea Party correlated slightly with better scientific comprehension, a result the investigator found “surprising.”

A broader study of political parties and cognitive reasoning yielded similar conclusions for the Yale University law professor. Identification with the Republican Party correlates with a better performance on a cognitive reasoning test, a conclusion which even stunned the study’s author. “[Cognitive] scores increased with the strength of subjects’ identification with the Republican Party” (emphasis original).

The author described this result as “puzzling” and had predicted the “cognitive scores would be negatively correlated with right-wing ideology.”

His taxpayer-funded survey also revealed, “Liberals and conservatives were uniformly prone to ideologically motivated reasoning.”

To carry out this study, 1,750 adults took an online survey that asked about political party identification and ideology and put participants through a three-question cognitive reasoning test.

Then, participants also answered questions about how they perceived the three-question test as a measure of their ability.

NSF funds for the study came from a $398,990 grant intended for much different biology-related purpose: to analyze how the public perceives the risks of synthetic biology, “an emerging technology that permits scientists to design living organisms unlike any found in nature.”

NSF announced earlier this year that a result of sequestration “the total number of new research grants will be reduced.”

Approximately 600 new NSF grants were not funded.

It is difficult to justify funding this politically motivated project while cutting off federal support for hundreds of scientific proposals.

www.scribd.com...

So specific groups aren't being targeted by our police-state fascist government?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Let's not forget the tanks that Congress is forcing the Army to buy that they've said repeatedly that they don't want or need. They already have over 3,000 in storage alone, and they're being forced to buy several thousand more, so that they can keep jobs going in Ohio.

Zaphod58
Let's not forget the tanks that Congress is forcing the Army to buy that they've said repeatedly that they don't want or need. They already have over 3,000 in storage alone, and they're being forced to buy several thousand more, so that they can keep jobs going in Ohio.

Yet your airforce which is strecthed is being slashed?

Disgusting.

i do not agree with some of the so called waste.

28)
Paying for veterans’ health care twice
–

(Medicare; Veterans
Administration) $1 billion
Since the creation of managed healthcare plans in Medicare in 1982
–
now known as Medicare Advantage (MA)
–
the federal government has been paying for healthcare services twice for many older veterans. The total bill for duplicate healthcare amounts toover $3 billion, at least one third of which could likely be saved
without affecting the medical care of a single veteran
.
Veterans of the military are generally eligible for life for healthcare services from the
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Many veterans over age 65 also enroll in MA plans,
which receive a lump sum from the federal government to provide comprehensive care to
their patients. MA plans are responsible for paying almost all he
health costs for any necessary treatment. Regardless of how much a patient uses services under the plan, the
federal government has already paid its share on behalf of the enrollee.
In recent years, almost one million older veterans have enrolled in Medicare Advantage
plans.
Many of these patients did not limit their medical use to what the government has
already purchased for them through Medicare. Half of these “dual enrollees” used both the
VA and MA for health services.

Ten percent used only the VA, even though they were enrolled in a Medicare plan.

For the latter group, MA plans provided no services but still received a lump sum for each of these patients
from the federal government. The VA spends 10 percent of its medical care budget on veteran
s who are already covered under MA plans.

All of these services could have been provided through these patients’ MA
plans, for which the government already paid.
Alternatively, the VA could seek reimbursement from MA plans for any care provided to
their enrollees. Existing federal law, however, prevents the VA from doing so. The result is
that even though MA plans have already been paid to provide healthcare to patients, the VA
still has to pay for its obligation to veterans. In a sense, the federal government is paying
twice for these services.
Due to offsetting market forces, forcing Medicare to reimburse the VA would not likely save
taxpayers the full $3.2 billion it pays annually for dually enrolled veterans.

However, it
is reasonable to expect with better coordination and efficiency, taxpayers should be able to
save at least $1 billion by eliminating this duplicative spending
with no negative impact on the medical care of veterans
.

I am a service connected veteran and plan to sign up for Medicare.

Why because the nearest VA urgent care clinic is 300 miles round trip from where i live.
Yesterday i had to drive to the VA urgent care clinic for a simple but very painful Urinary tract infection.
that any local Medicare clinic could have taken care of.

But for major and service connected medical problems my local medicare doctors are not trained or equipped to handle. (small town doctors.)
The VA hospital i go to is staffed by UCLA doctors.

Many veterans over 65 can not handle driving long distances for minor problems.
Some can no longer drive due to medical problems.

crazyewok
That $30,000,000,000 could have gone to NASA and allowed the USA to dominate space again. It would have put back to peak 1966 NASA budget.

But nope $30 billion wasted.

Another nail in the American coffin.

edit on 17-12-2013 by crazyewok because: (no reason given)

NASA ?

Why put money into rocket engineering eh ?

Thought all the rage was social engineering these days.

B. Hussein Obama (a.k.a. captain teleprompter) with his administration of clowns, idiots, and outright traitors, including all the congressional and senatorial jerk-offs, have decided in their infinite wisdom to cut military retirement pensions by $6 billion over the next 10 years.

source: www.foxnews.com...

No worries though they'll be tripling a request from the trust fund children in Israel for more financial aid, in addition to a $3 billion annual free lunch.

source: www.lewrockwell.com...

Along with ignoring an IRS loophole that permits illegal immigrants, to claim $4.2 billion annually in refundable tax credits for their start-up baby factories.

source: www.washingtontimes.com...

neo96


NASA ?

Why put money into rocket engineering eh ?

Thought all the rage was social engineering these days.

Low and behold you miss the point and the bigger picture!

1) i never said rocket tec, rockets have been obsolete since the early 60's with nuclear propulsion, only reason your gov still uses rockets is cause they dont have a backbone to stand up to hippies.

2) this is beyond right or left bs (omg shock horror the thought!!!!). This is about human suvival. The earth is getting short on resources, the earth is becomeing over populated. The solar system provides both space and enough resources to last centuries.

3) if the usa doesnt get up there first and exploit the riches, china and russia WILL, and they do have plans. If they beat the usa they could choke you off, cause realky you think they will share ? while they reap the riches you end up a third rate power with a unrecoverable econemy under unable to compete with the resource rich china and russia.

Not eveything is about right or left politics there are bigger issues at stake.