BLOGS BY BOB

While President Obama and Congress struggle with exactly what the new stimulus plan will accomplish no one seems to be looking at  wasteful spending, especially the very vocal Republican minority which loudly complains of too much spending but ignores the waste they created when they held both houses of congress and the presidency.  According to a 2005 report by the Heritage Foundation http://www.heritage.org/research/budget/bg1840.cfm we could save scores of billions of dollars if we eliminated really unnecessary spending.  Want some examples? 

      Unreconciled transactions totaled $24.5 billion in 2003.  The government knows that $25 billion was spent by someone, somewhere, on something, but auditors do not know who spent it, where it was spent, or on what it was spent. The unreconciled $25 billion could have funded the entire Department of Justice for an entire year.

      Over one recent 18-month period, Air Force and Navy personnel used govern­ment-funded credit cards to charge at least $102,400 for admission to entertainment events, $48,250 for gambling, $69,300 for cruises, and $73,950 for exotic dance clubs and prostitutes.

      Medicare wastes more money than any other federal program, For example, Medicare pays as much as eight times what other federal agencies pay for the same drugs and medical supplies. The evidence showed that Medicare paid an average of more than double what the VA paid for the same items. The largest difference was for saline solution, with Medicare paying $8.26 per liter compared to the $1.02 paid by the VA

      In 2000, Medicare’s payments for 24 leading drugs were $1.9 billion higher than they would have been under the prices paid by the VA or other federal agencies.   The reason, Congress hamstrung Medicare by forcing them to pay whatever price pharma companies wanted.  By law Medicare, unlike the VA, is not allowed to negotiate for the lowest possible price.  Thank you President Bush.

Putting it all together, Medicare reform could save taxpayers and program beneficiaries $20 bil­lion to $30 billion annually without reducing ben­efits. That would be enough to fund a $3,000 refundable health care tax credit for nearly 10 mil­lion uninsured low-income households.

And then there are redundancies, where several organizations exist to do the same thing.  More examples from the Heritage Foundation Report:  

• 342 economic development programs;
• 75 programs funding international education, cultural, and training exchange activities;
• 50 homeless assistance programs;
• 40 separate employment and training pro­grams;
• 3 agencies providing aid to the former Soviet republics;

Instead of grandstanding in their feigned righteous indignation over spending in the stimulous plan, I suggest Republicans look within and correct, in a bipartisan manner, the godawful mess they created.  If we eliminated the wasteful spending can you imagine how many jobs could be created, how many families could be provided with health insurance, how many people could be fed and how many students could be educated? 

Please comment here or email your thoughts to me at jaxbob@gmail.com

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