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from the how-your-tax-dollars-are-spent dept.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), chairman of the Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management (FSO) Subcommittee for the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC), continued his efforts to reform the big-spending status quo with the release of a Summer 2019 edition of The Waste Report.
Once again, Dr. Paul's Waste Report turns the spotlight on just some of the ways the federal government spends the American people's hard-earned money, with this edition including stories of building up Tunisia's political system and the Pakistani film industry, supporting "green growth" in Peru, teaching English and IT skills at madrassas, studying frog mating calls, making improper payments, and more.
The biggest seem to be:
Converted an abandoned mental hospital into DHS HQ (GSA and DHS) .......... $2,120,040,355.35
Paid out billions from Medicare in improper payments (CMS) ....................... $48,000,000,000
[Editor's Comment: The full 15-page report is found in a Scribd display on the given link.]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 06 2019, @10:24PM (6 children)
Indeed. For that matter, what is so wrong about building up Tunisia's political system? I guess I could see how there might be flaws in implementation but if this is about encouraging civilized debate over matters of public policy and promoting free and fair elections then I am all in favor of that. I am also in favor of encouraging the good folk of Pakistan to put their energies into making movies; I would much rather they focus on that than...ummm...some other things I could think of. Same with teaching English and IT skills at madrassas; I would much rather the kids are learning useful skills that they can use to get better jobs and contribute to the global economy rather than getting their heads filled with toxic ideologies. Also, what is so god awful wrong with supporting green growth? Honestly, the one that concerns me the most is the part about "improper payments"; I would really like some elaboration on that part.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @01:39AM
Well, maybe if Trump wasn't ruining the American reputation across the world.... No, actually little things like these are the small costs America pays to maintain its worldwide empire. But do feel free to object, and you'll have a fun time bitching again when such places go up in revolt and want nothing to do with the U.S. and become the next stronghold locations for whatever succeeds ISIS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @06:06PM (1 child)
"US tax dollars", motherfucker. not "world tax dollars".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @10:21PM
Yeah? And? Have never heard of buying goodwill abroad in order to have peace at home?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday September 08 2019, @10:55PM (1 child)
There are some who have this crazy notion that Muslims can't do democracy. Their main evidence for this belief is that when they try to do democracy, those democracies tend to get replaced by dictators or monarchs. What they don't mention is that when that happened, typically the reason for that was that the democracy was trying to carry out the will of their people but that will was inconvenient to western oil companies, and the dictator or monarch was a CIA asset.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:59AM
What's been our track record with building up other countries' political systems?
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Monday September 09 2019, @10:54PM
There's nothing wrong with this at all - but he needed some red herrings to pad out his list.
The list comes to $50 billion. $48 billion of which is dodgy medicare payments. Then you add $2 billion for converting a old hospital into something else. Now, you can't have a list with two items on it. So let's find more controversial stuff. To me, the fact that there are entries here that are for $100,000 is just boggling. The US Gov budget is $3.8 trillion dollars. If the third highest thing on your list of "We blew this much monies!!!" list is $51 million - as part of paying for research (Paid for Google Scholar searches in Hawaii (NSF, NOAA, USFS, DOI, NASA) …… $51,722,107) I'd say that's a pretty tip-top budget.
Stop talking about $500k spent on a research grant about frogs. Start talking about things like this "On September 28, 2018, Trump signed the Department of Defense appropriations bill. The approved 2019 Department of Defense discretionary budget is $686.1 billion. It has also been described as "$617 billion for the base budget and another $69 billion for war funding." [Source] [wikipedia.org]