Billions in Bloat Uncovered in Beltway

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 3/1/20100 | DAMIAN PALETTA

[MasterGunner01]

As I recall, it was from Martin L. Gross’ “The Government Racket: Government Waste from A to Z”, Harper Collins, 1992. Gross documented all the waste, fraud, and abuse 19 years ago. Eight years after he first wrote the book, he updated it in 2000. Nothing has changed and it's gotten worse, far worse.

Here's one item to get the flavor of his book: “. . . We have 154 different job-training programs. At no point does anyone even claim that they get any jobs. They had a cosmetology job-training program that cost $148,000 per license. We have a job corps that costs $25,000 per kid, the residential program. They said 46 percent of the kids finished the program until the inspector general came in and said, ‘No, you're lying; only 14 percent completed it.’ We have job-training programs in all 14 cabinet agencies. And, when I said it was $17 billion wasted, when Nancy Kassenbaum took over in ‘95 as head of Education and Labor, she said, “No, no, it's not $17 billion; it's $25 billion.”

[Wuli]

The only way to end the mess is to reduce every executive agency to its most basic functions:

with budget legislation that declares what those limited and certain basic functions are that will be funded

and that provides funds ONLY for those basic functions,

together with legislation that, in one bill, declares the END of all federal programs NOT DIRECTLY ADDRESSED in that budget (without even having to go and identify them - excluded by the fact that they are not included in the “clean house” budget law).

(Of course additional legislation needs to end various federal agencies and commissions altogether.)