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jimhanson 
Group: Moderator
Posts: 8491
Joined: Aug. 2003
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Posted on: Feb. 13 2006,2:12 pm |
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Here's a "Federal Budget by the Numbers" overview from the Heritage Foundation. Lots of tables, charts, graphs, examples. Out of control Federal spending, "Earmarks", Pork.
Lots of things to debate--something here for both Liberals and Conservatives.
http://www.heritage.org/Researc....D=93690
Here's a partial summary of waste | Quote | Nowhere To Cut?
· The federal government made at least $37 billion in overpayments in 2005. Current estimates are between $40billion and $100 billion in annual overpayments.
· Federal auditors are currently examining all federal programs. Thus far, 38% of all examined programs have failed to show any positive impact on the populations they serve. Yet lawmakers appropriated $154 billion to these programs in FY 2004.
· Members of Congress have spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars supplying their offices with popcorn machines, plasma televisions, DVD equipment, ionic air fresheners, camcorders, and signature machines.
· Lawmakers diverted $13 million from Hurricane Katrina relief spending to build a museum celebrating the Army Corps of Engineers—the agency partially responsible for the failed levees that flooded New Orleans.
· The federal government cannot account for $24.5 billion spent in 2003.
· The Defense Department wasted $100 million on unused flight tickets and never bothered to collect refunds even though the tickets were refundable.
· Over one recent 18-month period, Air Force and Navy personnel used government-funded credit cards to charge at least $102,400 for admission to entertainment events, $48,250 for gambling, $69,300 for cruises, and $73,950 for exotic dance clubs and prostitutes.
· Congress recently gave Alaska Airlines $500,000 to paint a Chinook salmon on a Boeing 737.
· Examples of wasteful duplication include: 342 economic development programs; 130 programs serving the disabled; 130 programs serving at-risk youth; 90 early childhood development programs; 75 programs funding international education, cultural, and training exchange activities; and 72 safe water programs.
· Washington spends $60 billion annually on corporate welfare, versus $43 billion on homeland security.
· The Congressional Budget Office published a “Budget Options” book identifying $140 billion in potential spending cuts.
· The federal government spends $27 billion annually on special interest pork projects such as grants to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or funds to combat teenage “goth” culture in Blue Springs, Missouri.
· Washington spends tens of billions of dollars on failed and outdated programs such as the Rural Utilities Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Economic Development Association.
· The federal government made at least $37 billion in overpayments in 2005. Current estimates are between $40 billion and $100 billion in annual overpayments.
· Massive farm subsidies also go to several members of Congress and celebrity “hobby farmers” such as David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, Scottie Pippen, and former Enron CEO Ken Lay.
· Congressional investigators were able to receive $55,000 in federal student loan funding for a fictional college they created to test the Department of Education.
· The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s $3.3 billion in overpayments in 2001 accounted for over 10% of the department’s total budget.
· The Advanced Technology Program spends $150 million annually subsidizing private businesses, and 40% of this goes to Fortune 500 companies.
· The Conservation Reserve program pays farmers $2 billion annually to not farm their land.
· The Department of Agriculture spends $12 billion to $30 billion annually on farm subsidies, the vast majority of which go to agribusinesses and farmers averaging $135,000 in annual income.
· The Army Corps of Engineers has been accused of illegally manipulating data to justify expensive but unnecessary public works projects.
· Food stamp overpayments cost $600 million annually.
· School lunch program abuse costs $120 million annually.
· Veterans’ program overpayments cost $800 million annually.
· Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) overpayments cost $9 billion annually.
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Here's an example of entitlement payments, in constant dollars. It shows a more or less straight-line growth.
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"If you want to anger a Conservative, tell him a lie. If you want to anger a LIBERAL, tell him the TRUTH!"
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Ned Kelly
Group: Members
Posts: 1073
Joined: Dec. 2004
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Posted on: Feb. 13 2006,2:55 pm |
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| Quote (jimhanson @ Feb. 13 2006,2:12pm) | Here's a "Federal Budget by the Numbers" overview from the Heritage Foundation. Lots of tables, charts, graphs, examples. Out of control Federal spending, "Earmarks", Pork.
Lots of things to debate--something here for both Liberals and Conservatives. |
The Chamber says you are too negative.......  .....ned
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| Post Number: 3
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jimhanson
Group: Moderator
Posts: 8491
Joined: Aug. 2003
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Posted on: Feb. 13 2006,3:05 pm |
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 Yeah, we can't have any DISSENTION or DEBATE in the community--we should all be clones--like the County Board Gang of Four! 
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"If you want to anger a Conservative, tell him a lie. If you want to anger a LIBERAL, tell him the TRUTH!"
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Glad I Left
Group: Members
Posts: 2302
Joined: Aug. 2005
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Posted on: Feb. 13 2006,3:40 pm |
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Does anyone else out there think we should have a balanced budget amendment?
Running our country shouldn't be much different then running your own household. You make money when you work. You pay your bills at the end of the month. You budget for expenses you know are coming.
There are times when you may need to use credit, tornado blows roof off house. You still have to budget the next few months to pay off that use of credit.
How can this country simply keep working on a deficit.
| Quote | | · The federal government cannot account for $24.5 billion spent in 2003. |
This shouldn't surprise anyone. One of the biggest problems with the federal gov't is the lack of a spending control system.
The GAO only investigates wasteful spending when it is notified of the possibility. They do not actively check spending habits of any gov't institution unless instructed to do so. We all know DC works, no one out there is going to report some other dept's spending. It's all a bunch scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.
We should implement a private sector accounting firm with no ties to anyone in DC and have them report accordingly. It would be expensive but the money they save by not letting some A-hole get a popcorn maker so he can eat while watching movies on his new plasma TV while breathing Ionic air would more than pay for it eventually!
Oh yeah, the 4 terds in command in Cobb county would certainly vote against that if were inplemented in Freeborn county. Couldn't get the new courthouse that way!
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After we screw up health care reform, let's take on the initiative of unscrewing the education system (gov't education)
Tacitus: (c. 56 AD-c. 117) "The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates."
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| Post Number: 5
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Expatriate
Group: Members
Posts: 16675
Joined: Oct. 2004
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Posted on: Feb. 13 2006,4:07 pm |
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ECONOMIC ARMAGEDDON fiscal philosophy of the Bush Administration..
this strategy is Grover Norquists brainchild..
don't worry another tax cut for the wealthy will fix everything... 
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History is no more than the lies agreed upon by the victors.
~NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
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| Post Number: 6
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jimhanson
Group: Moderator
Posts: 8491
Joined: Aug. 2003
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Posted on: Feb. 13 2006,4:27 pm |
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I'm for a balanced budget amendment.
Here's what happened in 1997 and 2003. From CNN http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/02/13/budget.amendment.ap/
| Quote | The White House has said Bush supports a balanced budget amendment but that it should include exceptions for war, national emergency and economic recession. Istook's amendment has an exception for declared war or national emergency but not for recessions.
The top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, issued a statement Thursday questioning the usefulness of the amendment.
"A constitutional amendment does nothing to resolve the re-emergence of deficits because it lays down no plan of action and will not take effect for six years at the earliest," he said.
The last time a balanced budget amendment came up for a vote, in 1997, it came one vote short in the Senate. It passed the House in 1995.
Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, has introduced a balanced budget amendment in the Senate.
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Being a proposed Constitutional Amendment, it requires a 2/3 approval. Here's how the vote came down, according to CNN's AllPolitics | Quote | WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, March 4) -- The GOP effort to add a balanced budget constitutional amendment has failed in the Senate on a 66-34 vote.
The bill fell one vote shy of the two-thirds majority an amendment to the Constitution requires. All 55 GOP senators and 11 of the 45 Democrats voted for it. Its hopes for passage were dashed last Wednesday when Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) announced that he would vote against it.
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Let's do it. Legislators have consistently shown that they can't reign in spending. While we're at it, let's not let them push the problem out to future generations--see below. From the same Federal Budget by the numbers report mentioned previously in this thread.
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"If you want to anger a Conservative, tell him a lie. If you want to anger a LIBERAL, tell him the TRUTH!"
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| Post Number: 7
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Ned Kelly
Group: Members
Posts: 1073
Joined: Dec. 2004
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Posted on: Feb. 13 2006,5:12 pm |
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Seems to me I have seen this graph before with different dates. I think it was during the last years of the Reagan revolution...........................  What goes around, really does come around......  ...... .....ned
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| Post Number: 8
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Expatriate
Group: Members
Posts: 16675
Joined: Oct. 2004
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Posted on: Feb. 13 2006,6:53 pm |
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| Quote (Ned Kelly @ Feb. 13 2006,5:12pm) | | Seems to me I have seen this graph before with different dates. I think it was during the last years of the Reagan revolution........................... What goes around, really does come around...... ...... .....ned |
déjà vu
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History is no more than the lies agreed upon by the victors.
~NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
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| Post Number: 9
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jimhanson
Group: Moderator
Posts: 8491
Joined: Aug. 2003
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Posted on: Feb. 14 2006,10:10 am |
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Like so much libbie rhetoric--a good "sound bite", but short on facts. Not at all "like the last years of the Reagan Revolution".
Total entitlements as a percentage of the Federal Budget are about the same in 2010--30 years after he took office--as they were when he took office.
Defense is smaller. Medicare is larger. Social Security is a smaller percentage.
Look at the actual expenditures on the graph--1980 to 1988. Look at the follow-on years, if you are so inclined.
Only the interest costs resemble the projections from that era.
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"If you want to anger a Conservative, tell him a lie. If you want to anger a LIBERAL, tell him the TRUTH!"
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| Post Number: 10
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Ned Kelly
Group: Members
Posts: 1073
Joined: Dec. 2004
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Posted on: Feb. 14 2006,1:09 pm |
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| Quote (jimhanson @ Feb. 14 2006,10:10am) | Not at all "like the last years of the Reagan Revolution".
Only the interest costs resemble the projections from that era. |
The projected interest scared me so bad I didn't even look at the rest of the projections. They are small compared to the spike in interest costs. Which is why I said it looks like the projections from the latter Reagan years... Large deficits cause us to pay more interest as a nation.... ..
So if you would, kind sir, explain to me why interest costs are projected so high? What is the main reason? Could it be the massive budget deficits this administration is running up?  .......ned
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