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Federal spending in fiscal year 2006 increased by a whopping 9 percent — the largest rise since 1990 — and has risen more than 40 percent since President Bush took office. The most recent rise far outpaces inflation — the Consumer Price Index is up only 1.3 percent in the past 12 months. "The greatest scandal in Washington, D.C., is runaway federal spending,” Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said after the midterm elections. In recent years, he points out, the GOP majority "voted to expand the federal government’s role in education, [added new] entitlements, and pursued spending policies that created deficits...

Alaska Republican Ted Stevens admitted Wednesday that he used a parlaimentary maneuver to secretly block legislation that would open federal spending practices to public scrutiny. Stevens used a procedure known as a "secret hold" to derail the legislation, which was introduced by Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.), said Aaron Saunders, a spokesman for Stevens. Speculation over who placed the hold on the measure, which would create a searchable database of $2.5 trillion in government contracts, grants, insurance, loans, and financial assistance, has been swirling around Capital Hill as well as the blogosphere.

June 15, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - A Houston hairdresser with a long rap sheet conned the feds into paying for his sex-change operation with Hurricane Katrina aid, it was revealed yesterday. In a shocking example of mismanagement and fraud in the widening FEMA fiasco, Michael James Green, 25, was charged with bilking the feds out of $36,000 meant for destitute hurricane victims. He claimed to have lived in 18 damaged addresses and used 18 different Social Security numbers, federal prosecutors said. But Green wasn't using the money for food and shelter: He used it to pay for a sex-change operation,...

WASHINGTON - As requests for emergency assistance poured in after Hurricane Katrina, one applicant listed as his address the Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans. FEMA promptly issued a check for $2,358 for rental assistance. That's just one of thousands of examples of alleged fraud and abuse described in a new report by the investigative arm of congress — abuse that cost taxpayers about $1 billion. One person applied for aid 13 times, using 13 bogus addresses, and received a total of $139,000. The report says FEMA didn't even try to verify the identity of people who applied for aid by...

A $2.7 trillion budget plan pending before the House would raise the federal debt ceiling to nearly $10 trillion, less than two months after Congress last raised the federal government's borrowing limit. The provision -- buried on page 121 of the 151-page budget blueprint -- serves as a backdrop to congressional action this week. House leaders hope to try once again to pass a budget plan for fiscal 2007, a month after a revolt by House Republican moderates and Appropriations Committee members forced leaders to pull the plan. With passage of the budget, the House will have raised the federal...

State and local governments may be able to tax certain aspects of Internet use under an existing federal law designed to ban such fees, government auditors said this week. The comments came in a new Government Accountability Office study (click here for PDF) commissioned by Congress to examine a law known as the Internet Tax Freedom Act. First passed in 1998 and renewed after some debate in 2004, the law prevents state and local governments from taxing "a service that enables users to access content, information, electronic mail or other services offered over the Internet." Services like voice over Internet...

Republicans are looking for "their" John McCain. The popular Arizona maverick is already a Republican, of course. But the GOP needs a McCain in the "Keating Five" sense. Back in 1990, Senate Democrats roped McCain into the scandal over savings and loan kingpin Charles Keating on tenuous grounds, just so not all the senators involved would be Democrats. The GOP now craves such bipartisan cover in the Jack Abramoff scandal. Republicans trumpet every Democratic connection to Abramoff in the hope that something resonates. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), took more than $60,000 from Abramoff clients! North Dakota Democratic...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Attempting to rekindle his image as a bipartisan populist, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday urged cooperation among lawmakers and proposed a sweeping $222 billion public works program that would require the largest bond package in state history. The governor's annual State of the State speech addressed issues basic to the lives of most Californians, including more funding for public schools, rebuilding freeways and transit systems, improving air quality and raising the minimum wage. He asked Californians to move beyond a year filled with acrimony over the special election he had called and devoid of significant political accomplishment....

WASHINGTON - Fallout from the Jack Abramoff scandal continued Friday as more lawmakers said they will donate to charity campaign contributions related to the disgraced lobbyist. Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said they plan to donate to charity a total of nearly $30,000 in campaign contributions they received from tribes connected to Abramoff, who pleaded guilty this week to felony charges in a wide-ranging political corruption investigation. Cantwell will be donating nearly $18,000, and Santorum, about $11,000. Sen. Mark Pryor (news, bio, voting record), D-Ark., meanwhile, said he is returning $3,800 in contributions he received from former...

Gingrich Blasts Republican "Teamwork" Newt Gingrich, the original architect of the Republican Revolution, is obviously dismayed to see his handiwork going up in flames. Even so, the force with which Newt is blasting his party's corruption woes is surprising. As he told Bloomberg: The Abramoff scandal has to be seen as part of a much larger and deeper problem. It's not about lobbyist corruption. You can't have a corrupt lobbyist without a corrupt member or corrupt staff. This was a team effort. There are a series of behaviors, a series of attitudes, a series of crony-like activities that are not...

When congressional Republicans, a free-spending lot who have helped ratchet up federal spending to record levels, proposed slowing the rate of federal spending growth by a hair, congressional Democrats accused Republicans of wanting to starve the poor and recreate Dickensian England.That scenario, in a nutshell, explains the looming fiscal crisis at all levels of government. The debate is between those who want enormous government and those who want something even bigger than that. Hence, the Associated Press reported this week that "entitlement" spending is growing out of control. The word "entitlement" itself is a problem. Americans believe they are entitled...

SACRAMENTO - After a year of sounding like former Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan and calling for new powers to cut spending, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has shifted gears. He's begun to sound a bit more like another former California governor, Democrat Pat Brown, who presided over an era when the state built freeways, water projects and universities. "I want to create an infrastructure — a huge infrastructure — that reduces the gridlock of our roads, builds the facilities that our cities and counties need, speeds up the movement of goods ... and delivers more energy and water and all the resources...

$39M Katrina Gov't. Credit Charges Probed By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer 7 minutes ago Federal employees helping Katrina victims charged more than $39 million on government credit cards for disaster relief items. Congressional investigators want to make sure the taxpayers got a good deal. And a senator, citing past abuse, wants to know whether anyone used the cards for holiday shopping. Many of the goods, which included $60,639 for sleeping bags and $713 for four 27-inch televisions, were bought at retail rather than cheaper volume prices following the Aug. 29 storm, according to federal records. The spending also included...

This may be the last holiday season to enjoy tax-free Internet shopping, thanks to new legislation in the U.S. Congress. Two bills introduced Wednesday propose sweeping changes to how Americans are taxed for online and mail order purchases. Businesses initially would be required to collect sales taxes on purchases shipped to roughly half of the country, and that percentage is expected to rapidly increase. "Main Street retailers collect sales taxes, while many online and catalog retailers are exempt from collecting the same taxes," said a statement published by Sen. Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican. "This is costing states and localities...

Alaska's governor outlined a plan Thursday to spend almost $200 million on two bridge projects, including one dubbed the "Bridge to Nowhere" that triggered sharp criticism across the nation. Congress recently dropped its funding provisos for the bridges in Ketchikan and Anchorage, but let the state keep the money and left it up to state officials to figure out how to spend it. Gov. Frank Murkowski in a budget proposal Thursday said he wants to use $91 million for the Ketchikan project in the fiscal year beginning in July. The two-bridge project would connect the town's airport to Revillagigedo Island,...

Thanks to a congressional earmark, an open-borders advocacy group that pushes for driver’s licenses, free in-state tuition and healthcare for illegal aliens and bilingual requirements for state agencies and ballots is slated to get $4 million in new taxpayer money to add to the more than $30 million it has received from various federal agencies since 1996. The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), Spanish for “the race,” will get its latest grant through an appropriations bill passed by Congress on November 18. The Joint Explanatory Statement of HR 3058, available on the House’s Rules Committee website lists 1,100 plus...

It is one of the secrets of the Beltway: Washington loves disasters. With large-scale disasters, government expands, its friends get wealthy and citizens become as docile as kittens. That is why Congress calls it "disaster relief" — the relief is from the usual restrictions on revenue spending and individual responsibility.

WASHINGTON - With Gulf Coast governors pressing for action, Senate Finance Committee members complained Wednesday that the Bush administration is blocking a bipartisan $9 billion health care package for hundreds of thousands of evacuees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. ADVERTISEMENT "We've got people with needs today," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said. She was joined by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, who testified via a teleconference hookup, in urging quick action on the legislation. Sen. Charles Grassley (news, bio, voting record), R-Iowa, chairman of the committee, said four or five senators have been blocking action on the...

The Republican congressional leaders want Indiana’s Rep. Mike Pence to go away, or at least shut up. They say that he’s grandstanding by talking about cutting spending and that the effort of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), which he chairs, to force them to look for offsets as they prepare to spend as much as $200 billion on hurricane relief, on top of the spending that already has conservatives rolling their eyes, is “counterproductive.” Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), among others, took Pence to the woodshed last week and,...

Louisiana's congressional delegation has requested $40 billion for Army Corps of Engineers projects in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, about 10 times the annual Corps budget for the entire nation, or 16 times the amount the Corps has said it would need to protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane. Louisiana Sens. David Vitter (R) and Mary Landrieu (D) tucked the request into their $250 billion Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief and Economic Recovery Act, the state's opening salvo in the scramble for federal dollars. The bill, unveiled last week, would create a powerful "Pelican Commission" controlled by Louisiana residents...