Posted on 01/14/2024 8:29:20 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In 2021, your federal government spent $6 million every single minute. That’s $9 billion every day, almost $3 trillion per year.
For just a glimpse of that insanity, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the enormous Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS), has 27 Institutes and Centers (I.C.s), and in fiscal year 2020 had a budget of $41.6 billion (plus a separate $3.6 billion for COVID-19 that year). President Biden’s request for fiscal year 2023 was almost $49 billion...plus the new “mandatory” budget items ($5 billion for a new Advanced Research Projects Agency — Health, $12.5 billion for Pandemic Preparedness, and $1.2 billion for PHS Program Evaluation, etc.), which runs the total to over $62 billion. All 27 I.C.s asked for more money; last year, the Office of the Director was the only unit that took a “cut,” from $2.521 billion to $2.519 billion. It asked for $2.728 billion for next year.
This is for the Cabinet department (HHS) that ranked the absolute worst, by far, in “improper payments” (i.e., waste) in 2022 of $132.6 billion. A distant second was the Small Business Administration, which wasted $37.3 billion, followed by the Dept. of the Treasury, which wasted “only” $26 billion. Sure, let’s add some new projects and programs, ’cause it’s not as if we have a $34-trillion national debt, the interest alone on which has now surpassed the defense budget.
According to OpentheBooks, a government watchdog group, the total “improper payments” for 2022 was estimated at $247 billion by 17 federal agencies. That’s an average waste of $20.5 billion per month.
Agencies four through ten on this infamous list of wastrels are the Labor Dept. ($19 billion), Education Dept. ($15.7 billion), Social Security Administration ($7.4 billion), Veterans Affairs Dept. ($3.5 billion), ...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
HERE’s THE KICKER:
Dead people made out in 2022, receiving over $532 million in pensions, disability insurance, and Social Security payments. Alas, St. Peter doesn’t deliver retirement checks (and neither do those who cashed those payments to the dead).
It’s not all bad news, though; OpentheBooks reported that the government successfully recaptured $23.2 billion “through audits and other ‘recovery activities.’” So those dedicated public servants were able to recover 9% of more than a quarter-trillion dollars they wasted...and I’d bet somebody will get an award for that.
The Labor Department, which overpaid $78 billion in 2021 unemployment, reduced its waste by 75% in 2022, “only” overpaying $19 billion. There’s another Employee of the Month, I betcha.
Getting more people reliant on the government for their jobs so that the DEMs can use the scare tactic that GOP will cut the budget and take away those jobs.
The federal government is nothing but a jobs fair program for liberals and democrats.
Some agencies, like the State Dept, even more so.
Not dysfunctional at all. It is working as planned.
Budgets need cut and cut deeply. Make it hurt. Make them manage money because they sure aren't now. It is being wasted by the pile.
$247,000,000,000, that’s 247 BILLION for those in Rio Linda, does not even give the bureaucrats or politicians a pause. It is becoming round off to them.
Budgets need cut and cut deeply. Make it hurt. Make them manage money because they sure aren’t now. It is being wasted by the pile.
America...land of the fee and home of the knave.
This looks to be about ten years old:
https://budgetbook.heritage.org/eight-charts-show-growth-government/
The US probably should look to budget based on 1974 era budget items - these budgets would have things like Medicare and Medicaid, but not the bloat added since 1974.
“hurt”
If invaders can get jobs if given work permits, so can laid-off leeches.
Our government servants, not rulers. US citizens don’t have rulers.
No one can read that mess. American Thinker should have been presented it in bullet point format.
The House of Representatives needs to go to four-year terms so members can pay better attention to their jobs.
The four-year terms might start in 2027, offset by about two years from the term of the President.
Four-year terms
The federal budget is being set by people too stupid to cut their burden of getting reelected by more than half.
More than 90 years ago, in 1921, Vladimir Lenin, first Premier of U.S.S.R. (1918-1924) spoke on How to Destroy the West. His words are printed here:
• Corrupt the young. Get them away from religion, encourage their interest in sex.
• Make them superficial by focusing their attention on sports, sensual entertainments and other trivialities.
• Always preach true democracy, but seize power as fast and ruthlessly as possible.
• Encourage government extravagance; destroy its credit.
• Produce fear with rising prices, inflation and general discontent.
• By specious argument, cause the breakdown of the old moral virtues – honesty, sobriety, self-restraint.
• Cause registration of firearms to leave the population defenseless.
“No one can read that mess. American Thinker should have been presented it in bullet point format.”
The federal budget is an incomprehensible mess.
It has to be broken up into understandable pieces, by department and then by long-term items, by continuing transient items, and by new transient items.
For 13 departments, it would mean at least 39 budget bills.
No budget bill should be more than 100 pages.
No bill spending money should have unrelated substantiative law changes in it.
“Budgets need cut and cut deeply.”
We need to go to fundamental funding budgets with necessary and proper additions. Our latest bill adds...
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