One initiative in President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2021 budget, to be presented to Congress Monday, targets waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money.
Read MoreOne Aspect of Trump’s New Budget Proposal Targets Waste, Fraud: Report
Tag: spending
States Across the Boards Plan to Increase Spending in Fiscal 2020
State lawmakers nationwide are spending more money, but they are also replenishing rainy day funds in preparation for the next economic downturn, a new report determined.
Read MoreReport: Government Wasted $230 Million on Failed Programs
The U.S. government spent $33.9 million of taxpayer money on unused textbooks for Afghani children. The books are still sitting in decaying storage units in Afghanistan. American taxpayers also spent $16 million to improve the quality of Egyptian education.
Read MoreAudit: Dead People Have Been Collecting Billions From Social Security as It Goes Bankrupt
Every year, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) audits the Social Security Administration (SSA) and publishes its findings.
Read MoreCommentary: Skyrocketing Debt Too Important to Be Paired With Spending Deal
by Justin Bogie Two major issues that Congress will be forced to confront in the coming weeks and months are the debt limit and the future of the Budget Control Act discretionary spending caps. A report from The Hill indicates that negotiations are underway between Congress and the Trump…
Read MoreLawmakers Eye a Huge Backdoor Spending Increase
by David Ditch Members of Congress are promoting the concept of changing three programs from the discretionary category (requiring annual appropriations) into mandatory (auto-pilot) spending. Such changes would become a huge backdoor spending increase. Spending limits have come under relentless attack from both parties. In 2013, 2015, and 2018,…
Read MoreRick Manning Commentary: President Trump Versus Washington’s Spending and the Constituencies Who Fight for Them
by Rick Manning In Washington, D.C., every spending program and tax break has a constituency that fights for it. This is why they exist, because somewhere, someone believes that Warren Buffett needs a wind production tax credit, and that opera programming should be taxpayer funded. These constituencies are tightly…
Read MorePresident Trump’s Executive Order Freezing Federal Pay Saves Taxpayers from Double-Digit Pay Increases
by Rachel Greszler President Donald Trump issued an executive order effectively freezing federal pay for 2019 at current 2018 levels. Had the president not issued this executive order (and lacking congressional action on federal pay), federal workers would have received a 2.1 percent across-the-board pay increase, as well as a…
Read MoreCommentary: Only Two Weeks Left for Republicans to Get It
by Rachel Bovard There’s only one area where bipartisanship still reigns in Washington: avoidance. Republican and Democrat leaders this week held hands and used the funeral events for President George H. W. Bush as an excuse to move their funding deadline—which previously expired on December 7—two weeks forward, to December…
Read MoreChuck Schumer Demands Climate Concessions From Trump on Infrastructure Spending
by Michael Bastach Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told President Donald Trump that Democrats won’t cut a deal with him on infrastructure spending unless it includes a slew of policies aimed at fighting global warming. Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, called for, among other things, making green energy and…
Read MoreREPORT: EPA Paid $14.5 Million For Foreign Nationals, Not Americans, To Work In Government Labs
by Michael Bastach The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) paid $14.5 million to foreign nationals to work at agency laboratories over the past 11 years that could have been awarded to U.S. citizens and permanent residents, according to federal investigators. EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) found the agency’s cooperative…
Read MoreDeceptive Tricks Congress Uses to Drive Spending Higher
by Justin Bogie Congress is up to its old tricks again, trying to pass another massive spending bill that uses gimmicks and tricks to push deficit spending even higher. And it thinks it can hoodwink President Donald Trump into signing it. Next week, the House is expected to vote on…
Read MoreThree Budget ‘Reforms’ That Would Make Matters Worse, Not Better
by Dody Eid and Romina Boccia A congressional select committee on reforming the budget process recently held another public hearing, supposedly with the ultimate aim of designing a more transparent, accountable, and responsible budgetary process. Any such changes should also re-establish and enhance Congress’ power of the purse. But if those are…
Read MoreCommentary: Trump, Reagan, and Big Government
by Jeffery Rendall As I strolled through the excellent and memory-provoking exhibits at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (in Simi Valley, CA) the other day I was struck by how similar President Donald Trump’s approach to today’s politics is to the way Ronald Reagan handled the subject a half…
Read More‘Pig Book’ Spotlights 232 Earmarks Amid Pork That Wastes Taxpayers’ Money
by Katherine Rohloff All but a relative few farmers and other rural residents have had electricity and telephone service for a generation, but the U.S. government devoted $10 million in the current budget to a duplicative Rural Utilities Service program designed to help pay for energy costs. Taxpayers continue to finance the…
Read MoreCommentary: The Ticking Fiscal Time Bomb Set in 1937 Could Tip America Into Despotism by 2030
by Robert Osburn Celebrated this past July 4, America’s founding story of freedom is truly remarkable: unity, courage, integrity, and national integration (incorporating people from around the world). In most other places, the freedom story is bloody, exclusive, and, ultimately, tyrannical. Take Nicaragua, for one example: In 1979, the Sandinistas…
Read MoreThe Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds Are Nearly Depleted
By Robert Romano 2026. That is when the Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund will be depleted, according to the Board of Trustees for the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds. That is down from 2029. After that, the share of benefits paid for by revenues will drop until…
Read MoreSenate Fails to Pass the Rescission Package
By Printus LeBlanc When President Donald Trump signed the omnibus spending bill back in March, he did so reluctantly. The swamp knew the President’s feelings for the military and hid behind them to fill the omnibus with wasteful spending. The President signed it, hoping some of the spending would be…
Read MoreTrump’s ‘Rescission’ Package Would Save Unspent Tax Dollars
by Justin Bogie President Donald Trump on Tuesday submitted a special message to Congress requesting that $15 billion in unspent funding be rescinded. That’s a good first step toward re-establishing fiscal responsibility. Congress should embrace it and quickly adopt the president’s rescission package. Still, the package does nothing to claw back the…
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