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The GAO Government Waste Report

by coldwarrior ( 115 Comments › )
Filed under Economy, government, Politics, Regulation at March 2nd, 2011 - 11:30 am

Sometimes you have to lift your head up out of the dust and grime and work of the day and yell:

FREEZE!!!

and then take a survey or a snapshot of what is actually going on in your organization…perhaps actually answer the questions: Does the right hand know what the left hand is doing? Has this organization spun out of control? Does anyone have any idea what is going on here? Where in the name of the All-Seeing-Almighty-Comptroller is all of the money going???

Well, the Good Senator From Oklahoma, Tom Coburn, R (of course), yelled

FREEZE!!!

and then he ordered the GAO to answer the above questions.

Perhaps he was the only sane person in the room; the only one that had the clarity of vision to take a step back.

So this, From ‘The Corner’ at NRO by Andrew Stiles as background:

The GAO study, which was mandated by an amendment that Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) attached to last year’s debt-limit resolution, did not provide an exact dollar figure as to how much money the government was potentially wasting, but Coburn estimated it could be as much as $200 billion. He said the report had identified “the mother lode of government waste.”

“This report confirms what most Americans assume about their government,” Coburn said in a statement. “We are spending trillions of dollars every year and nobody knows what we are doing. The executive branch doesn’t know. The congressional branch doesn’t know. Nobody knows.”

On Monday, before the report was made public, Coburn predicted that the findings would “make us all look like jackasses,” and would contain enough actionable information “keep Congress busy for the rest of the year.”

He continues with some highlights:

* Eight federal agencies oversee 80 programs to provide “transportation for the transportation disadvantaged.” The GAO could not determined a cost estimate for these programs because the agencies “often do not separately track transportation costs from other program costs.” However, 23 of these programs were allotted $1.7 billion in 2009.
* Two separate bureaus within the State Department received close to $80 billion in 2010 for “Arms Control and Nonproliferation.” The reports found significant redundancy, noting that a guiding document to outline the role and responsibilities of these bureaus “has never been drafted and approved.”
* The Department of Transportation funds more than 100 “surface transportation” programs overseen by five individual agencies (and 6,000 employees) at an annual cost of nearly $60 billion. According to the report: “The current approach to surface transportation was established in 1956 to build the Interstate Highway System, but has not evolved to reflect current priorities in transportation planning.”
* Federal data centers, which grew in number from 432 in 1998 to more than 2,000 in 2010, cost up to $450 million annually. The federal government could save between $150 billion and $200 billion over the next decade simply by consolidating these centers.
* Twenty federal agencies runs 56 programs designed to promote “financial literacy,” but, ironically enough, no one has any idea how much these programs actually cost, because “most federal agencies do not have an estimate for spending on ‘financial literacy’ per se.”
* Nine federal agencies operate 47 job-training programs, 44 of which overlap with at least one other program. These programs cost $18 billion in 2009, but GAO found that due to their duplicative nature, “little is known about [their] effectiveness.
* Ten agencies oversee 82 distinct programs on “teacher quality” at an annual cost of more than $4 billion. The report discovered that “there is no government wide strategy to minimize fragmentation, overlap or duplication among these many programs.”
* Fifteen federal agencies administer over 30 food-related laws to the tune of $1.6 billion annually. GAO discovered that “seafood oversight,” normally performed by the FDA, had been split by recent legislation that assigned responsibility for monitoring catfish to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
* Domestic ethanol tax credits, totaling close to $6 billion, are “largely unneeded today to ensure demand for domestic ethanol production.”
* More than 170 tax expenditures — in the form of tax exclusions, credits, deductions, deferrals, and preferential tax rates — account for almost $1 trillion.
* At least five departments, eight agencies, and more than two dozen presidential appointees have been tasked with coordinating an effective defense again a biological terror attack, at a cost of $6.5 billion. However, the report concludes: “There is no national plan . . . and the United States lacks the technical and operational capabilities required for an adequate response.”

Well, for those of you brave souls and those of you who love a good report:

THE FULL GAO REPORT IS RIGHT HERE!

Have a ball.

Here is a nice graph of 2010 expenditures

Tags: Government Control, government spending
Posted in Economy, government, Politics, Regulation | 115 Comments »

Obama’s Creeping Government Control: Credit Cards

by WrathofG-d ( 288 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Economy, Politics, Socialism at May 24th, 2009 - 4:09 pm

Last Wednesday, President Obama once again abused the power of Government to dictate to private individuals on how they can do business. This time it was to credit card companies.

Unsurprising, the main stream media is hailing this horrible infringement on an individual’s liberty as a huge reform to protect the consumer.

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Banks say the changes may cut the flow of credit to consumers because it will make it more difficult for issuers to set rates based on the risk their customers pose.

“With this bill we are putting in place some common sense reforms designed to protect consumers,” Obama said at a signing ceremony at the White House.

“We’re not going to be giving people a free pass and we expect consumers to live within their means and pay what they owe. But we also expect financial institutions to act with the same sense of responsibility that the American people aspire to in their own lives,” he said.

Enactment marks the crest of a backlash against the card industry after years of rate and fee hikes and aggressive marketing programs that have angered consumers, analysts said.

The law largely codifies a set of rules issued by the Federal Reserve last year and puts them into effect in February 2010, five months sooner than the Fed had planned.

It also represents the first major financial regulation reform completed by Obama as he tackles a rewrite of the rules of banking and the markets to better protect consumers and investors, and prevent another credit crisis.

{The Rest of The Article From Yahoo News}

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AOL adds the following:

The White House staged a signing ceremony in the Rose Garden, an indication of the legislation’s importance to Obama. Though opposed by many financial companies, the bill cleared Congress with broad support.

Obama made clear that he didn’t champion the changes with the intention of helping those who buy more than they can afford through “reckless spending or wishful thinking.”

“Some get in over their heads by not using their heads,” the president said. “I want to be clear: We do not excuse or condone folks who’ve acted irresponsibly.”

And yet, he said, for many of the millions of Americans who use credit cards and carry a balance, trying to get out of debt has been made difficult and bewildering by their credit card companies.

Obama said many “got trapped” because of the downturn in the economy that has turned family budgets on their heads. But, he said, “part of it is the practices of the credit card companies.”

He criticized policies that allowed for confusing fine print; the sudden appearance of unexplained fees on bills; unannounced shifts in payment deadlines, interest charges or rate increases even when payments aren’t late; and payments directed to balances with the lowest interest rates rather than the highest.

“We’re here to put a change to all that,” Obama said.

…

“So we’re not going to give people a free pass, and we expect consumers to live within their means and pay what they owe,” Obama said. “But we also expect financial institutions to act with the same sense of responsibility that the American people aspire to in their own lives.”

Obama decried the “uneasy, unstable dependence” that a minority of card users have on credit.

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Credit card contracts can be confusing, and paying off debt is exceptionally difficult. However, Government intervention isn’t the answer. Despite the tone of President Obama’s comments, no one forced any of these consumers to get credit cards (especially if they didn’t understand their contract), or live beyond their means.

Additionally no one got “trapped”. Every credit card was sold to an individual over the age of eighteen, and thus only to adults. If they are wise enough at eighteen to get an abortion (although they don’t need to be 18 to do that), join the U.S. armed forces, and VOTE then they are wise enough to decide what sort of deal to make with a private credit card company, or not to make one at all.

This is just another example of an Administration with a nanny-state mentality, overreaching with the powers of the Federal Government to gain control of another industry and eliminate any sort of individual responsibility. The Government will be making this decision for you now.

Although every individual instance might not by itself be a tragedy, this is all part of a larger trend. This constant slide away from personal liberty should be cause for alarm; not praise. Although it might seem like a helpful intervention now, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the path to political slavery with precedent created for the “common good”.

What is the list of Government controlled private industries at this point? It is great to see that this Administration isn’t wasting this “good [financial] crisis”. (sarc!)

click for info regarding the transaction of digital money to cryptocurrency.

Tags: Contract Clause, Credit Cards, Financial Crisis, Government Control, President Obama, Socialism
Posted in Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Economy, Politics, Socialism | 288 Comments »

House Proposes Legislation To Have The Treasury Dept. Control Employee Wages

by WrathofG-d ( 5 Comments › )
Filed under Democratic Party, Politics at March 31st, 2009 - 11:30 am

The U.S. Democrat majority is taking further steps to completely control the private sector. Like all tyranny, what was borne out of a crisis, is exacerbated by professed “good intentions”. If we continue down this path, all major aspects of the private sector could be owned and controlled by the Federal Government. I fear that the actions we see today are going to be used as precedent for future actions along these lines, and thus the damage to our Liberty being done today to ‘cure the crises’ will be irreparable.

Oh, and if you object to the Government taking full control of the once-called private sector, you are “corrupt” and unpatriotic! Read the article below.

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The House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the “Pay for Performance Act of 2009,” would impose government controls on the pay of all employees — not just top executives — of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

The purpose of the legislation is to “prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards,” according to the bill’s language. That includes regular pay, bonuses — everything — paid to employees of companies in whom the government has a capital stake, including those that have received funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The measure is not limited just to those firms that received the largest sums of money, or just to the top 25 or 50 executives of those companies. It applies to all employees of all companies involved, for as long as the government is invested. And it would not only apply going forward, but also retroactively to existing contracts and pay arrangements of institutions that have already received funds.

In addition, the bill gives Geithner the authority to decide what pay is “unreasonable” or “excessive.” And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate “the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates.”

The bill passed the Financial Services Committee last week, 38 to 22, on a nearly party-line vote. (All Democrats voted for it, and all Republicans, with the exception of Reps. Ed Royce of California and Walter Jones of North Carolina, voted against it.)

The legislation is expected to come before the full House for a vote this week, and, just like the AIG bill, its scope and retroactivity trouble a number of Republicans. “It’s just a bad reaction to what has been going on with AIG,” Rep. Scott Garrett of New Jersey, a committee member, told me. Garrett is particularly concerned with the new powers that would be given to the Treasury Secretary, who just last week proposed giving the government extensive new regulatory authority. “This is a growing concern, that the powers of the Treasury in this area, along with what Geithner was looking for last week, are mind boggling,” Garrett said.

Rep. Alan Grayson, the Florida Democrat who wrote the bill, told me its basic message is “you should not get rich off public money, and you should not get rich off of abject failure.” Grayson expects the bill to pass the House, and as we talked, he framed the issue in a way to suggest that virtuous lawmakers will vote for it, while corrupt lawmakers will vote against it.

“This bill will show which Republicans are so much on the take from the financial services industry that they’re willing to actually bless compensation that has no bearing on performance and is excessive and unreasonable,” Grayson said. “We’ll find out who are the people who understand that the public’s money needs to be protected, and who are the people who simply want to suck up to their patrons on Wall Street.”

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