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Don’t you just love big government?I’ve always had a problem with big government, or to be more specific, government waste. It just bugs me.Sure, I understand, the U.S. Government is enormous, with millions of employees. It’s hard to keep track of everything that goes on.But the enormity of government waste is just mind-boggling. Here are some examples.An audit of 2003 records revealed that the government is missing 24.5 billion dollars. That’s billion, with a B. It’s missing, gone, unaccounted for. They know they had the money. They know they spent the money. But they don’t know who spent the money or what it was spent on.24.5 billion dollars is enough to fund the entire U.S. Justice Department for a year, and they don’t know where the money went, and they’re still looking for it.The Defense Department buys a lot of airplane tickets. They have a lot of traveling to do. Between 1997 and 2003, the Defense Department purchased an estimated 27,000 airline tickets that were never used. The real problem is, all of those tickets were fully refundable, but the refunds were never requested. The cost to taxpayers? Around $100 million.Even worse, between 2001 and 2002, auditors found that the Pentagon purchased an additional 27,000 tickets that were paid for twice. Why? No one seems to know. They also “reimbursed” many employees for airline tickets that they never purchased. One employee was found to have made seven false claims for airline ticket reimbursement. The employee said he/she never noticed the additional $9,700 in his/her account. That little issue cost the taxpayers an additional $8 million.The Defense Department should have taken better care of their funding. That $108 million that they lost could have bought them an additional 17 M-1 A-1 Abrams battle tanks, or enough additional body armor to protect thousands of troops.If you’re not mad yet, these next couple will get you going.In an effort to streamline things, the USDA began issuing credit cards to employees so they could make job-related purchases without all the hassle of filing requests and filling out all sorts of paperwork. Seems like a good idea, but a random sampling of 300 of the accounts revealed that 15% of the credit card purchases were for personal items. Everything from Ozzy Osbourne concert tickets to lingerie to tattoos to bartender school tuition to car payments and cash advances. The cost to taxpayers? $5.8 million.The USDA has 55,000 credit cards in circulation. Among them are 1,549 carried by people who no longer work for the USDA.The USDA isn’t alone though with credit card account problems. A recent internal investigation has revealed that over an 18-month period, Air Force and Navy personnel used government-issued credit cards to charge at least $102,400 for admission to entertainment events, $48,250 for gambling, $69,300 for cruises, and get this, $73,950 for exotic dance clubs and prostitutes.Remember that when you grumble as you write your income tax check out to Uncle Sam. |
Ramblings...