Remedies For Our Deficit; The Untouchables
Posted: Saturday, February 06, 2010
by Joel Hendon
http://hebronics.org/index.html
Our nations expenditures are now running over a trillion dollars annually more than our projected income and is expected to continue to do so for as long as they can foresee. This does not include catastrophic disasters, either man caused or not. Any additional expenses or lessening of Gross Domestic Product will simply widen that chasm we are falling into. Every member of the legislative, the executive and the judicial branches of our government, knows of dozens of ways to cut our wasteful spending. But it is like putting iodine on a child's sore...it smarts!
Perhaps "pork" is the most ridiculous of all or illegitimate expenses. All of our legislators and the White House decry these unnecessary expenses yet let any bill which has any reasonable chance of passing, and just about each legislator will plug in a "gift" for his district or constituents. Then he/she will go home and arrange an interview with his local paper to tell what has been accomplished. The Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) organization keeps tab on these things and have shown them. Now you talk about bi-partisanship, you've got it in the pork barrel. The CAGW has determined that pork spending increased from $17.2 billion in 2008 to $19.6 billion in 2009.
Now, it is not to say that many of these pork-chops are poor projects. Most are worthwhile, BUT, in almost all cases they should be the state's responsibility and not the federal government's. We're trying to climb out of a hole here. And each of those expenditures is simply like the dirt caving in on us as we climb. Here are a few which the CAGW lists:
$3.8 million dollars for conservancy of the Old Tiger Stadium in Detroit.
$1.9 million for Pleasure Beach water taxi service in Connecticut.
$1.8 million for swine odor and manure management research in Ames, Iowa.
$380 thousand for a recreation and fairgrounds area in Kotzebue, Alaska.
These are Federal Government responsibilities? And there are enough of these sorts of things to amount to $19.6 billion.
Pork is neither the only waste, nor the largest. Pet projects of congress such as AMTRAK are adding senseless billions to our deficit. Regardless of our childhood nostalgia and the love of hearing a steam engine huffing and puffing and accentuated by an occasional shrill whoooooo-whoooo, their gone. So are the passengers for the later model diesels. Congress has allocated $10 billion dollars to subsidize AMTRAK for the next five years. Plus they received $1.3 billion from the stimulus fund for "deferred maintenance" over the past decade. Yet this still is not enough. AMTRAK had requested $20 billion to take care of a backlog of projects. Maintenance of this service where it is unprofitable, is indefensible. Wherever any of it's routes do not pay their way, they should be dropped. And the administration now has plans to invest billions more into high speed rail travel. This should never be done without first determining that adequate patronage will be there to make it self supporting.
The reason this is so unprofitable is that one can travel, say from Washington D.C. to Orlando and back on AMTRAK, a 34 hour ride for about $220, but he can make the round trip by plane in about 4 hours and for $180. We can't afford the luxury at this point, of subsidizing empty trains.
The Citizens Against Government Waste is a non-partisan, non-profit organization, based in Washington D.C. with over one million members whose efforts are simply studying means of eliminating wasteful spending by our government and have identified many areas where savings are possible but not popular politically. Our elected officials should be constantly prodded by their constituents to take heed to these areas rather than making massive cuts in truly important areas. Visit the CAGW website at: http://www.cagw.org/
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)If we, a citizen, did this with our budget we'd be thrown in jail for printing money in the basement....Right on.
Hi Joel.Pleasure Beach water taxi service? This is definitely a state concern not that of the federal expenditure. Thank you for writing this well-written piece. Kudos to you for putting this issues in the open.All the best to you and yours,NenitaThanks Nineta, I appreciate your nice comment.
Always a breath of fresh air - along with the facts and figures to back it up!Thank you Marijo, I do appreciate your comment.
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