You Americans are weak. Look at some of the programs your Clinton had in place. We paid him so well. Long Beach Harbor, the Panama Canal - ours. Soon you will be boxing chopsticks for us for a living.
-- Taxpayer Group Applauds Bush for Cutting Wasteful Program --
/FROM PR NEWSWIRE WASHINGTON DC 202-347-5155/
TO NATIONAL AND POLITICAL EDITORS:
Taxpayer Group Applauds Bush for Cutting Wasteful Program
'There's Plenty More Where That Came From.'
WASHINGTON, June 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Citizens Against Government Waste
(CAGW) today commended the Bush Administration's recent decision to eliminate
an $860,000 federal program that counseled public housing tenants to reduce
stress and kick drug addictions by using alternative methods of therapy
including meditation and aromatherapy or by surrounding themselves with
relaxing colors.
The Creative Wellness HELP program, implemented during former-Housing and
Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo's tenure, was set to go national
right before the Bush team eliminated funding.
"This is asinine. More than $600 of HUD's drug-fighting budget was spent
on 'nutrition kits' -- that included sugar, candy, and Jim Beam whiskey," CAGW
President Tom Schatz said. "That's not exactly what kids should get to keep
them off drugs."
The program also uses "applied kinesiology" to improve tenants' health and
self-esteem. Here a wellness trainer probes a person's glands to determine
which of 14 personality types (each type is named for a Greek or Roman god or
goddess) they are. A pancreatic Minerva, for example, is a nurturer, a
talented teacher and concerned citizen.
"This program is a perfect example of how government spends money on
completely frivolous, even nonsensical items," Schatz also said. "The
Creative Wellness program is the tip of the waste iceberg -- there's plenty
more where that came from."
Other examples of careless federal expenditures include: $8 billion
annually for 14 distinct literacy programs (which, perversely, receive more
money as literacy drops); $699 over five years for Milk Marketing Orders which
inflate dairy prices for consumers; $100 million to the National Center for
Complementary and Alternative Medicine to study, among other things, soy and
sour cherries for their ability to reduce cancer pain, and "guided imagery," a
form of storytelling in which people relax by imagining peaceful scenes, to
children with asthma; $13.5 million for the East-West Center in Hawaii which
sponsors workshops on topics ranging from community-based forestry to
premarital sex, and holds a biannual international fair with music, dance,
crafts and games; and millions to help AIDS sufferers that have instead funded
Neiman Marcus shopping trips, calls to psychic hotlines, Disney tickets,
luxury cars, jet skis, and maids.
CAGW has chronicled $1.2 trillion over five years in bureaucratic waste,
fraud, and mismanagement. This year, in pork-barrel projects alone, Congress
racked up $18.5 billion.
"President Bush deserves credit for attacking the waste status quo, and
CAGW looks forward to helping the White House identify other ridiculous items
to cut. The president should consider cutting one wasteful program per month
for the next three years," Schatz concluded. "There is no clearer way to
signal taxpayers whose side you're really on."
CAGW is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, dedicated to eliminating
waste, fraud, and abuse in government. |
