“WASTEBOOK”, PISSING YOUR MONEY AWAY

Everyone is racing out to buy lottery tickets to win $630 million (at last count), which is kind of hilarious, because the criminals in Washington pissed away $30 billion without blinking an eye. Dr. Coburn completed his annual “wastebook” and all the crap your tax dollars are wasted on. Enjoy!

Government Blatantly Wastes $30 Billion This Year

Brianna Ehley, The Fiscal Times, December 17, 2013

When the sequester cuts slashed $85 billion from the federal budget, crippling federal programs like Head Start and halting crucial research at the National Institutes of Health, the government continued spending tax dollars on things like 3-D pizza printers for NASA, a beachfront property loan program for millionaires, and a $300 million Army surveillance blimp that doesn’t work.

Those are just three of the 100 examples of egregious government waste that cost taxpayers $30 billion this year–all detailed in Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) annual “Wastebook,” released Tuesday.

The report, obtained Monday night by The Fiscal Times, documents a host of federally-subsidized programs and projects that have incurred significant costs while offering little or no benefit to taxpayers.

The report isn’t just big ticket items, it also includes a spate of rather obscure, little-known projects as well, including a federally funded grant of nearly $400,000 awarded to Yale University to study the “oddity of the duck penis.” Another includes a $200,000 grant from the International Trade Administration was awarded to a group of indie rock execs to travel the world and discover new music.

“Collectively these cost more than $30 billion in a year when Washington would have you believe everything that could be done has been done to control unnecessary spending,” Coburn said in a statement. “Had just these 100 been eliminated, the sequester amount would have been reduced nearly a third without any noticeable disruption.”

In his report, Coburn wastes no time in taking aim at his colleagues in the do-nothing 113th Congress, which, he says, achieved very little this year, aside from passing 56 laws, forcing a 16-day government shutdown and maintaining an approval rating that hovers around 10 percent.

“The first session of the 113th Congress will likely go down in history as the least productive in history, more notable for what it do not do than what it did,” Coburn said. He added that the government shutdown cost taxpayers $400 million reinstating paychecks for furloughed federal employees earning more than $100,000 a year. This includes members of Congress.

“Congress should not be paid when it fails to pass an annual budget required by law,” Coburn said.

The latest “Wastebook” was released just ahead of a Senate vote on a bipartisan budget deal brokered by Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray, which passed the House last week.

Coburn, a Republican and known deficit-hawk, voiced his disappointment in the deal during an interview on MSNBC last week, saying it doesn’t go far enough to address the long-term debt and doesn’t achieve any savings by eliminating any of the wasteful spending highlighted in his report.

“None of that’s addressed in this. None of the waste, the duplication, the fraud. None of it,” he said.

Here are some of the highlights in the report:

Beachfront Property for Millionaires — $500 million: A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) home loan program, created to help people with low and moderate incomes afford a home in “rural areas” has been used by many millionaires in “resort communities” in tropical paradises like Hawaii. According to the report, more than 100 individuals or families received loan guarantees for $500,000 or more from the USDA to purchase a home in Hawaii. And here’s the kicker, “if these new homeowners later cannot afford their new homes it’s no problem, the federal government will protect the banks from losses by repaying 90 percent of the loans,” the report says. Last year, it paid nearly $500 million in lost claims.

Botched Blimp — $300 million: The Army spent three and a half years and nearly $300 million building a football field-sized blimp called the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle, to provide continuous surveillance over Afghanistan battlefields, but the project was riddled with errors and cost-overruns so the Army eventually just sold it back to the contractor.

NASA’s “Pillownauts” — $360,000: During the shutdown, 97 percent of NASA’s staff was laid off, still the agency was paying 20 people $18,000 each to literally lie around and do nothing for 70 days with their body “slightly tilted forward” for a study to help scientists learn how astronauts bodies will change in space flight. However, NASA isn’t planning any missions anytime in the foreseeable future, since it no longer has a manned space program…So they people getting paid to lie in bed all day might as well keep dreaming.

Fort Hood Shooter Still on Federal Payroll — $53,000 (in 2013): Alleged Fort Hood Shooter Major Nadal Hasson, continues to get paid federal salary since the Military Code of Justice doesn’t allow a soldier to be suspended until they are found guilty. He made $52,952 in 2013 and $278,000 total since he allegedly killed 13 and injured 32 in 2009.

NASA Looks for Intelligent Life in Congress — $3 million: Since NASA’s space program has been grounded, it’s left to search for intelligent life on Earth. Curiously enough, it has chosen to explore Capitol Hill and the inner workings of Congress. Teaming up with Georgetown University, NASA will embark on its next mission of hosting a one-week seminar exploring how Congress works—almost as complicated and mysterious as the solar system?

Television Ads for Hurricane Sandy — $65 million: Of the $60.4 billion Congress appropriated for areas devastated by Hurricane Sandy, at least $65 million were put toward local television ads. Instead of rushing aid to the people who need it most, state-level officials in New York and New Jersey spent the money on tourism-related TV advertisements. Making this particularly vexing for some local residents, the flow of disaster aid has been both paltry and slow,” the report said.

Duplicate IT Systems — $321 million: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spent over $30 million on two IT programs that serve the same purpose. Both support “immigration enforcement booking management, which includes the processing of apprehended illegal aliens suspected of committing criminal violations of immigration law. However, DHS said it has no plans to address the duplicative expenditures. Similar problems have accorded at DOD, where the Air Force has two duplicative IT systems. In fact, according to a recent GAO report, three agencies have spent $321 million for overlapping IT purposes over the past several years.

Bureau of Print and Engraving Ruined New $100 Bills — $4 million: The new $100 dollar bills that came out in October, after several setbacks pushed back their release date. One of the latest incidents happened in the fall when too much ink was applied to the paper (known as “mashing”). As a result, the Federal Reserve returned the bills to the Bureau and demanded a refund. The incident cost the taxpayer about $4 million.

Half a Million to Spruce Up Block in Kansas Town — $500,000: The Department of Transportation awarded Rossville, Kansas—a tiny town with a population of 1,150—a grant of $532,000 to make one-block in the downtown area “more decorative and colorful.” According to the report, the “decorative and colorful improvements to one street block in Rossville, Kansas cost U.S. taxpayers $462 per resident of Rossville or $38,000 for each of the 14 businesses located on this block of Main Street.” Hopefully now taxpayers across the country will swarm to Rossville to enjoy the block they helped pay for.

NASA’s 3D Pizza Printer — $125,000: NASA awarded a $124,955 grant to Arjun Contractor to build a 3-D pizza printer. The space agency spends about $1 million on “Martian food development.” According to the report, a NASA scientist involved in the 3D printer pizza said it could be years until the creation becomes feasible. Too bad, it sounds out of this world.

Uncle Sam Looking for Romance on the Web – (NEH) $914,000. The Popular Romance Project has received nearly $1 million from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) since 2010 to “explore the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics, advice books, songs, and internet fan fiction, taking a global perspective—while looking back across time as far as the ancient Greeks.”

Mass Destruction of Weapons – (Department of Defense) $7 billion. As the U.S. war effort in the Middle East winds to a close, the military has destroyed more than 170 million pounds worth of useable vehicles and other military equipment. The military has decided that it will simply destroy more than $7 billion worth of equipment rather than sell it or ship it back home.

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. With nearly half-a-billion dollars in government funding put behind promoting a product that relatively few people seem interested in purchasing off a website that doesn’t work, Obamacare is perhaps the biggest marketing flop since Coca-Cola introduced the world to “New Coke” in 1985.

Government Study Finds Out Wives Should Calm Down (NIH) $325,525. If your wife is angry at you and you don’t want her to stay that way, you might avoid passing along the findings of this government study. Wives would find marriage more satisfying if they could calm down faster during arguments with their husbands, according to government-funded research.

Federally Funded Solar Panels Covered at Manchester-Boston Airport Because the Glare Blinds Pilots and Controllers (FAA) – $3.5 million. When officials at the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in New Hampshire installed new solar panels, they did not anticipate one quarter of them would not be used 18 months later. In Spring 2012, the panels were placed on top of the airport’s parking garage, and 25 percent have remained there, covered with a tarp, rendering them useless. Problems with the new panels were noticed almost immediately by air traffic controllers who claimed that for 45 minutes each day, glare made it difficult to oversee the airport’s runways.

Need Brains! Fighting Zombies with Pluses and Minuses — (NC) $150,000, A grant from NSF went to a company in North Carolina to develop a math learning game based on the zombie apocalypse.

NASA’s Little Green Man (NASA) — $390,000. Since NASA is no longer conducting space flights, they have plenty of time and money to fund a YouTube TV show and cartoon series called “Green Ninja” in which a man dressed in a Green Ninja costume teaches children about global warming.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/12/17/10-Most-Absurd-Stories-Government-Waste-Year#sthash.OP9ttFnF.dpuf
http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ContentRecord_id=e7359436-1572-414e-8acc-0222cad1c7d5&ContentType_id=d741b7a7-7863-4223-9904-8cb9378aa03a&Group_id=7a55cb96-4639-4dac-8c0c-99a4a227bd3a