Comment & Debate
Dr. Jim Garlow Chairman, Renewing American Leadership Action. Statement before the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution. May 13, 2011: “GAO Finds Hundreds of Billions in Duplication and Waste. And just how carefully have our stewards in Washington been spending all our tax dollars during this explosion of federal spending? According to the Government Accountability Office, it’s a scandal of epic proportions. A new law, attached to the last debt limit increase by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), mandated that the GAO begin analyzing federal programs for duplication and waste. On March 1 of this year the GAO published its first annual “Report on Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication,” which covered slightly more than one third of all federal spending. The auditors uncovered significant duplication in 33 areas, including: Twenty agencies operating 56 programs dedicated to financial literacy. GAO and agencies can’t even estimatewhat they cost. Highways programs have not been rebooted since 1956. The Department of Transportation (DOT) spends $58 billion on 100 separate programs run by five DOT agencies with 6,000 employees. GAO says the programs have ‘not evolved to reflect current priorities in transportation planning.’ In 2007, the U.S. Agriculture Department paid $1.1 billion in farm subsidies to 170,000 dead people. Fifteen federal agencies now oversee 30 food laws, and at least four departments compete to administer 80 economic development programs.”
Edward Glaeser. Balanced Budget Suddenly Looks More Appealing.” Bloomberg. Aug 1st, 2011: “there is plenty of federal spending that could be cut, such as agricultural subsidies, new highway construction and subsidies for homebuilding in Texas. Surely, not every dollar of defense procurement is absolutely necessary.”
Edward Glaeser. Balanced Budget Suddenly Looks More Appealing.” Bloomberg. Aug 1st, 2011: “The best argument for balanced budgets is that forcing governments to pay for their spending with current taxes will produce less wasteful spending. The past decade has done much to illustrate the allure of spending without taxation in Washington. The rotation of the parties was supposed to cycle gently back and forth between Democratic generosity and Republican thrift, but that model disappeared in the 1980s. Instead, Democratic taxing and spending is succeeded by Republican spending and not taxing.”