To round out our week-long discussion of limited government, bureaucratic waste and the like, I think a nice dose of egregious examples of public sector boondoggling is in order. So, in no particular order and always adjusted for inflation, here are all too typical instances of your tax dollars at work:
“Under ‘urban renewal’ policies [a favorite in the 60s and 70s] the government bulldozed inner-city neighborhoods across the country and warehoused millions of people in hideous, crime-infested high-rises. American cities are still recovering…” Only government can spend billions on projects that reduce the quality of life of the population targeted for aid.
The “Big Dig,” the immense network of underground highways, tunnels and bridges touted as the solution to Boston’s unsightly and perpetually clogged highway system “soon ballooned into a boondoggle — plagued with leaks, monumental cost overruns, criminal charges, and design flaws,” according to CBS News. The price tag was originally pegged at $2.6 billion. Twenty years later, the real cost came in at a little more than $15 billion, the costliest such project in the history of the world.
Created in 1965, Medicare was a hard sell. Budget hawks said healthcare proponents were grossly understating the program’s future costs, projected at the time to grow to $9 billion annually by 1990. 1990 rolled around and guess what? Costs had ballooned to $67 billion. By the way, budget experts agree Medicare has no “painless solutions,” according to Peter G. Peterson writing in Running On Empty. The program, as we know it, simply cannot be sustained. President Bush’s creation of Medicare Part D, prescription drugs for seasoned citizens, will only hasten the program’s demise.
“Buried in the Department of the Treasury’s 2003 Financial Report of the United States Government is a short section titled ‘Unreconciled Transactions Affecting the Change in Net Position,’” explaining these unreconciled transactions totaled $24.5 billion in 2003. “Unreconciled transactions are funds for which auditors cannot account: The government knows that $25 billion was spent by someone, somewhere, on something,” but no one knows who spent it or what was purchased. The lost amount could fund the U.S. Department of Justice for a full year.
Demonstrating patriotism of a different kind, lawmakers in 2007 included 1,776 earmarks in defense appropriations. Earmarks — otherwise known as “pork” — are financial requests added to spending bills under the cover of dark. That is, the requests are not debated nor voted on. When a legislator votes to fund B-2 bombers, for instance, he may also be allocating $200 million for an Alaskan bridge to nowhere. Both party’s presidential candidates have proposed a 1-year moratorium on such thievery. To the surprise of no one, just today the Senate rejected that idea. Pork to a politician is like heroin to an addict. In 2007, Democratic Senator John Murtha made 46 such requests, 2nd only to Bill Young’s 59. Republican Representative Jerry Lewis came in 3rd with 38 pork-laden petitions.
The Federal government may have been slow to respond to the damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina, but 2 1/2 years later it’s making up for lost time. Just last August, then Republican presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo went postal as he complained about “The amount of money that has been wasted on these so-called ‘recovery’ efforts.” Citing government figures, ”Keep ‘em Out” Tom said that $114 billion has already been spent, with little to show for it. Today’s Press-Enterprise is reporting that the company hired to coordinate payouts to aggrieved property owners, ICF International of Fairfax, Va., has been doing a terrible job. Forty percent of eligible applicants have yet to receive a penny. Yet, one of the last acts of out-going Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco was to raise the compensation limit for the contractor to $912 million. That’s right, do not adjust your screen, we are paying someone almost $1 billion to fork out about $10 billion as part of project Road Home. Swindlers everywhere are asking: ”Where is that road and how do I get on it?”
“The GAO [General Accounting Office] says that the Pentagon’s financial management problems are ’pervasive, complex, long-standing, and deeply rooted in virtually all business operations throughout the department.’ The Pentagon loses track of assets, wastes billions of dollars on poor management of its excessive inventory, keeps unreliable budget data, lowballs project costs, and makes billions of dollars in overpayments to contractors. A GAO investigation in 2005 found that the Pentagon spent at least $400 million over two years on new boots, tents, and other items at the same time it was discarding identical products as excess,” writes Chris Edwards. Sadly, the military throws away more than boots and tents. Jet engines warehoused around the country are given a 1-year shelf life. Engines not requested within 12 months are scrapped. As stupidity would have it, an audit found that military repair units were ordering replacement engines directly from the manufacturer, bypassing the already purchased and waiting motors, which were subsequently discarded. Arrrrrgh!!!
“A review in 2005 of Federal Aviation Administration projects designed to upgrade the nation’s air traffic control found that the combined costs of 16 projects had risen from $8.9 billion to $14.6 billion. For example, a computer system called STARS has jumped in cost from $940 million to $2.8 billion, and it is seven years behind schedule. The Department of Transportation’s inspector general notes that the expensive project is ‘facing obsolescence’ even before it is completed.”
We could go on and on about waste in U.N. funding, foreign aid, farm subsidies, border security, NASA, housing subsidies, Head Start, Food Stamps, FEMA, AFDC, the Bureau of Indian Affairs – the list is longer than a Siberian winter. The maddening truth is that American leaders have known the reasons behind this extravagance since the Civil War. John Stuart Mill was on to the problems in 1861, writing “The disease which afflicts bureaucratic governments…is routine…whatever becomes routine loses its vital principle, and having no longer a mind acting within it, goes on revolving mechanically, though the work it is intended to do remains undone.” He could be writing today, but why waste paper and ink? His observations and solutions have been ignored for 150 years.
Government agencies never face bankruptcy; unlike in the private sector, there is no penalty for mismanagement. Managers have built-in incentives to spend, but no such incentives to save. Obsolete and ineffective programs are duplicated but not replaced. Politicians purchase votes by funding local projects, securing their tenure and legacy, a major factor in pork-barrel spending. Politicians and government employees spend your money, not theirs, the ultimate reason explaining the otherwise incomprehensible waste.
America is the world’s wealthiest nation, producing almost 20% of the world’s goods and services. The fruits of that wealth include unequalled freedom, superior economic opportunity, improved longevity, wonderful educational opportunities, exceptional security, and an overall quality of life that is the envy of the world. All of that is threatened because average Americans have allowed government to grow beyond its constitutional bounds, and because those we place in positions of power are too short-sighted and self-serving to adhere to the founder’s principle of limited government. Nevertheless, ours is still a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” and therefore the people – you and me, average Americans — can once again set our nation on its proper course. There is still more right than wrong with America, and there is still time to put our national house in order. But not much time.
Get involved, while you still can.
Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Budgets, Economics, Government Waste, Limiting Government, Politics