As we helplessly stand-by and watch Congress battle over the ever increasing deficits in our country – the Republicans want to cut spending while the Democrats want to keep it going, with Republicans having a majority in the House, the Democrats still controlling the Senate – it is very difficult to understand how these people got elected to office as representatives of the people. There may be kinder words for this incredible fact but we have concluded that they are all utterly dumb, stupid and simply unwilling to even try and to bring our fiscal mess under control. Self-proclaimed experts and pundits explain this simply with the word: Politics!
What does this mean? Does politics excuse the fact that our Federal lawmakers are spending our country into unsustainable depths of debt? Have they gotten elected by telling their constituents before they got elected: Vote for me and I will support run-away spending as far as the eye can see? Of course not, they all said that they would work very hard and do everything necessary to reign in excessive spending so that our children and grand children would not be left with a heavy burden of debt. It’s the same crap we have heard from lawmakers about getting ‘energy-independent from foreign sources of oil’. It is a blunt lie whenever they say it. And so, the battle over our Federal budget goes on in Washington, D.C.
But wait, there was a Republican Senator who tasked the GAO (Government Accountability Office), the independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress to make a study as to whether or not there was duplicity in Federal agencies. The purpose for this report was see if there were potential areas for cutting spending by eliminating actual redundancies at the Federal level of government.. Please sit down as we list just a few of these duplicate services we are paying for.
? The U.S. Government has more than 100 programs dealing with surface transportation issues;
? 82 programs monitoring teacher quality;
? 80 programs for economic development;
? 47 programs for job training;
? 20 offices or programs devoted to homelessness;
? 17 different grant programs for disaster preparedness;
? 15 agencies or offices to handle food safety and
? 5 offices are working to ensure the federal government uses less gasoline.
? Even President Obama ridiculed the fact that the Federal Government has 12 different agencies dealing with international trade and at least two regulate salmon.
The GAO stated “reducing or eliminating duplication, overlap or fragmentation could potentially save billions of taxpayer dollars annually and help agencies provide more effective and efficient services.” Upon reading the GAO report, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn said “This report will make us all look like jackasses” Truer words have seldom been spoken. Government waste and abuse has been one of Coburn’s highest concerns and he equally blames the legislative and executive branches of government for this situation and the excessive spending. Last Halloween, he published a report concluding that the federal government has paid nearly one billion dollars to at least 250,000 dead people since 2000.
Will we see Congress in the near future tackle these numerous ‘Empires’ and streamline their activities or will this just be a ‘talking-point’ for fiscally conservative representatives only to be denied action by the free-spending Democrats? Only time will tell!