On Thursday, May 26, Senator Tom Coburn released a report detailing rampant waste and duplication at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The report exposes more than $3 billion in misspent and mismanaged funds. Among the most ludicrous uses of taxpayer money cited in the report: • $80,000 study on why the same teams always dominate [...]
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A General Accounting Office report released Tuesday found at least 3,700 federal government contractors and nonprofits that received money from the 2009 stimulus program owed the federal government back taxes. These entities, which received nearly 10 percent ($24 billion) of the $275 billion the stimulus allotted for federal contracts, loans, and grants, owe the government a [...]
Filed under: Appropriations, Budget, Congress, Corruption, Debt, Deficit, In The News, Reform, Regulation, Stimulus, Transparency, Uncategorized, Video, Waste | No Comments »
When it comes to High-Speed Rail (HSR), many supporters of big, federally-subsidized projects are quick to resort to ad hominem attacks, characterizing their opponents as reactionaries who are against “progress,” or selfish elitists with NIMBY concerns. So it’s refreshing to see an enormously well-respected, levelheaded publication (other than CAGW) like The Economist speak out against [...]
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Bad news out of Washington is often hidden from taxpayers by releasing it on a Friday. Friday, May 6 was a typical example. That’s when the troubled mortgage giant Fannie Mae reported its $6.5 billion loss in the first quarter of 2011 and asked taxpayers for another $8.5 billion to cover those financial losses (although [...]
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Washington has put Americans at risk by repeatedly violating a Budgeting 101 rule of thumb: Don’t spend more money than you take in. This week, taxpayers faced the consequence of Congress’ irresponsible budget policies when the nation finally hit its statutory $14.294 trillion debt limit. We applaud Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for [...]
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The following Op Ed by CAGW President Tom Schatz appeared today in Investor’s Business Daily. Some highlights: According to a mid-May news story, Democrats are considering using the issue of the auto bailouts in the 2012 election — as a political asset. The argument is, since government losses appear to be “minimal,” Americans will likely [...]
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In the past few months, much of the debate in Congress has centered on cutting the national debt. The national debt is the sum of two different sub-categories, the debt held by the public and intragovernmental holdings. The debt held by the public, the larger of the two components, is the sum of all debt [...]
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In what should come as a shock to no one with even the faintest knowledge of economics, wait times for health care treatment are up (way up) in Massachusetts. As the Wall Street Journal reports, that’s what happens when you subsidize something and restrict its supply: A new survey released yesterday by the Massachusetts Medical [...]
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A recent study conducted by the Phoenix Center found evidence suggesting that reducing federal regulatory activity would have a significant impact on economic growth and job creation. The study, which analyzes nearly fifty years of data spanning from 1960-2009, estimates that even a 5 percent reduction in the federal government regulatory budget would result in [...]
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On Wednesday the White House re-announced a plan to expedite the sale of federal property that government no longer needs. Bravo! As we’ve said before, it’s time for the federal government to wean itself off its longstanding obsession with property. Since its inception in 1984, CAGW recommended selling off unneeded federal property. We’ve included [...]
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