Posted on 10/08/2013 11:39:28 AM PDT by DanMiller
The Feral Federal Government wastes tons of money. It certainly is grand that we will always have plenty to spare.
U.S.S Barack Obama, our newest aircraft carrier
Here's a link to an article by Jonathan Turley about recent wastes involving the Pentagon, produced by some pleasing congressional bipartisanship. He notes,
[T]he Pentagon continues to spend wildly on items and them toss them out. We recently saw how [it] prefers to deliver bags of money to Karzai, buy Russian aircraft that Afghans can’t fly or maintain, or build huge buildings to be then torn down unused. Of course, no one is ever fired for constructing massive buildings that no one wants only to tear them down. After all, these are contracts going to powerful companies with friends in the government. Now, we buying huge planes at $50 million a pop only to roll them directly from the factories into mothballs because no one wants them. To make this even more incomprehensible, we are not even making the cargo planes. Like the Russian helicopters that the Afghans cannot fly, we are buying the cargo planes from Italy . . . and we are continuing to order more as we struggle to find places to dump them.The dozen Italian-built C-27J Spartans have been shipped to an Air Force facility in Arizona dubbed “the boneyard.” We are ordering five more, which are expected to be immediately sent with the others into mothballs. The Air Force has spent $567 million on 21 of the planes which will join some 4,400 other aircraft and 13 aerospace vehicles at the boneyard — more than $35 billion or unused airplanes. [Emphasis added.]
Why, an absurdely miserly person might ask, are we doing that?
Ohio’s senators, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman wanted them to give a mission for Mansfield Air National Guard Base and to save 800 jobs. So we will spend $567 million to save 800 jobs. Wouldn’t it have been easier to give half a million to each of their constituents and save the rest of the money?
It's a bipolar bipartisan effort. Bipartisanshitp is cool so that makes it good. Isn't that obvious? To promote even more bipartisanshitp, let's see how many more tax dollars our democratically elected officials can manage to burn if they can get another continuing resolution passed. Ditto if they can get another (higher) bipartisan debt ceiling passed to allow them to borrow even more money from generous friends who just want to help us out.
In what must have been a minor but at least competitive effort at even greater excellence, the General Services Administration bought a $47,174 mechanical bull for the Utah National Guard on the seventh day of Christmas the Government slowdown.
According to the General Services Administration (GSA) listing, the National Guard of Utah made the request for a “bull which needs to be durable and low maintenance.”The bull that was sold to the Utah National Guard should meet any state safety requirements. The Mechanical Bull Sales website says, “Our mechanical bulls are approved for use in all 50 states and Canada. This includes: Pennsylvania, New Jersey and California which have stringent safety requirements for amusement rides.”
Perhaps the mechanical bull will produce great quantities of fertilizer that can be sold to Utah's gardeners.
The Pentagon has lots of company. Here's a link to an article at Maggie's Notebook about the great "use it or lose it" feature of the budgetary process. "Use it or lose it" is part of the baseline budgeting process.
Baseline budgeting is an accounting method the United States Federal Government uses to develop a budget for future years. Baseline budgeting uses current spending levels as the "baseline" for establishing future funding requirements and assumes future budgets will equal the current budget times the inflation rate times the population growth rate.[1]
The article at Maggie's Notebook notes,
As a federal government shutdown looms, and the national debt is about to hit $17 trillion, federal agencies have quite literally been on a “use it or lose it” spending spree.This past week, the Department of Veterans Affairs bought $562,000 worth of artwork.
In a single day, the Agriculture Department spent $144,000 on toner cartridges.
And, in a single purchase, the Coast Guard spent $178,000 on “Cubicle Furniture Rehab.”
This string of big-ticket purchases was an unmistakable sign: It was “use it or lose it” season again in Washington.
All week, while Congress fought over next year’s budget, federal workers were immersed in a separate frantic drama. They were trying to spend the rest of this year’s budget before it is too late.
The reason for their haste is a system set up by Congress that, in many cases, requires agencies to spend all their allotted funds by Sept. 30.
If they don’t, the money becomes worthless to them on Oct. 1. And — even worse — if they fail to spend the money now, Congress could dock their funding in future years. The incentive, as always, is to spend. [Emphasis added.]
So they spent. It was the return of one of Washington’s oldest bad habits: a blitz of expensive decisions, made by agencies with little incentive to save.Read the whole thing. It’s disgusting. But Nancy Pelosi tells us the “cupboard is bare.”
Fortunately, there is little, if any, of the sort of accountability frequently found in private business, where people sometimes can even get fired -- oh, horror -- for wasting too much money. The Government is too tolerant and generous with its employees to fire those who waste lots of our money; there are probably too many to fire anyway and doing it would require too much hard work. Besides it's only money -- of which there is an infinite supply-- and the country remains in the very best of hands.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV_s6Vz1utA&w=640&h=360]
That's comforting. Nevertheless, we probably should think about getting some studies done and memos written -- some day, after dealing quickly and decisively with bigger and more pressing problems -- climate change and making ObamaCare web sites function, for example. Those are the true national priorities and resolution is, obviously, essential to our national survival. Since there's no need for urgency in dealing with mere financial waste, we should merely ask our CongressCritters to talk a bit more about it. That's clearly what we sent them to Washington to do, so words will suffice.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8zyF0ZOy3k&w=640&h=390]
“Use it or lose it” HAS GOT TO CHANGE!!!
Offer a 10% bonus for anything you save under your budget, to be split among the employees in your department.
Either your department get $100,000 worth of toner cartridges, or you get $10,000 to split in bonuses
I bet the fed budget would be cut in half in 2 years.
Not only that- most govt. agencies have NO WAY TO PROCESS RETURNED MONEY!!
If they buy something, and it is a piece o’ crap, they have to keep it- there is no way to process a refund.
I know this for a fact- I once worked for a govt agency and we bought $15,000 mapping software- it did not work- they flat out lied to us... but there was no way to return the product for a refund.
And once they are on the ‘approved vendor’ list there is no way to get them off.
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