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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (280941)	7/27/2002 4:24:51 PM
From: greenspirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Waste & Abuse Pork-o-meter Shows Cash Value of Political Pull Posted April 15, 2002 By Sean Paige insightmag.com Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has released its annual compilation of congressional pork-barrel projects, suitably titled The Pig Book. It's filled with the usual fare — a sampling of 8,341 earmarks totaling about $20 billion slipped into fiscal 2002 appropriations bills, in circumvention of the established budgetary procedures, by politicians hoping to curry favor with constituents (some of whom somehow fail to see that they're being bribed with their own money). That's a 32 percent increase in individual earmarks from the previous year, according to CAGW, constituting a 9 percent increase in overall pork spending at a time of rebounding budget deficits and urgent national-security imperatives. CAGW's little pink book highlights such ludicrous federal spending "priorities" as $50,000 for a tattoo-removal program in California, $450,000 to restore chimneys on Cumberland Island, Ga., and $273,000 to help counter the influence of "goth culture" on Missouri teen-agers. It also provides an illustration of how the power of the purse strings ebbs and flows according to committee position and the waxing and waning of political clout. Not surprisingly, senators occupying senior positions in Congress or on appropriations committees — Sens. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), former majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and current Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) — brought home a disproportionately large share of the bacon. But if one considers the case of Mississippi, which ranked third highest in per-capita pork spending in the last full year that Lott was majority leader but fell to sixth after control of the Senate shifted to the Democrats, one sees more clearly how position and pork correlate. In another illustration, South Dakota jumped from ninth in per-capita pork in fiscal 2001 to fourth in fiscal 2002, testifying to Daschle's increased influence and the appointment of that state's second senator, Democrat Tim Johnson, to the Appropriations Committee. In an ironic twist Byrd, who as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee brought his state a staggering $388 million in pork projects in fiscal 2002, has of late been engaged in a test of wills with the Bush White House over what the senator portrays as a matter of bedrock fiscal principle. He has been demanding that Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge testify before Congress on the subject of homeland-security spending; the White House insists that Ridge is not a Cabinet officer and so cannot, constitutionally, be compelled to testify. In a letter refusing Ridge's compromise offer to provide a "briefing" to senators rather than formal testimony, Byrd cited the Senate's "critical need for formal public hearings of the Appropriations Committee on matters involving public funds" as the reason that Ridge must testify. Yet the senator's insistence on accountability and adherence to procedure stands in sharp contract to the stealthy, unaccountable methods he's employed to abscond with more than $1.1 billion in pork since 1995, according to CAGW's tally. Have formal hearings been held concerning those public funds? Of course not. All of which suggests that Byrd's sudden interest in fiscal accountability and responsibility, vis-à-vis Ridge, is more about partisan politics and the Washington power game that it is about high fiscal principle.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (280941)	7/27/2002 4:27:39 PM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 769670

Introduction cagw.org Proponents of an expanded federal bureaucracy often equate government waste with beauty, saying that it is in the eye of the beholder. Earlier this year, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said that pork was anything north of Memphis. While these sorts of statements may receive a chortle from the press and some constituents, the events of September 11 have shown the American people that wasteful spending drains valuable resources from national defense, intelligence, and other vital interests. To help the nation defend itself against new threats and a sluggish economy, each agency should conduct a thorough self-examination to root out waste, fraud, and abuse and focus on results that benefit all Americans. Citizens Against Government Waste’s (CAGW) Prime Cuts 2001 is the blueprint for a smaller, more efficient and stronger government that can protect Americans and their wallets. Prime Cuts catalogues 543 recommendations throughout the government that if enacted, could save taxpayers $159 billion in fiscal 2002 and $1.27 trillion over the next five years. Prime Cuts features some long-standing proposals, such as terminating the Americorps Program (saving $2.2 billion over five years), reforming milk marketing orders (saving $669 million over five years), and eliminating the Advanced Technology Program (saving $480 million over five years). New recommendations include opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for drilling, saving $1.5 billion over five years. ANWR is a massive, 19.5 million acre chunk of land, roughly the size of Maine, in a forbidding far corner of Alaska above the Arctic Circle. Only a small portion of the refuge, called the North Slope, would be drilled. This 1.5 million-acre strip, roughly the size of Delaware, could have up to 16 billion barrels of oil. That represents more than 300 times the amount of the oil President Clinton released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an attempt to boost the Gore campaign in the fall of 2000. Based on December 2000 figures, drilling in ANWR could produce as much as 10 percent of the United States’ oil needs for 20 to 25 years, reducing dependence on foreign oil and vastly improving national security. For example, it would free America from 54 years of oil imports from Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Other recommendations include ending the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program (saving $2.5 billion over five years) and reducing drug elimination grants by 25 percent (saving $133 million over five years). CAGW’s Prime Cuts 2001 arms citizens, legislators and the media with a specific, rational and achievable menu for rightsizing government. Until these recommendations are enacted, and until all policymakers understand that tradeoffs are necessary to enhance defense, intelligence, and security, the nation will remain threatened by both terror and fiscal disaster.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (280941)	7/27/2002 4:36:32 PM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 769670

THE FARM BILL FIASCO progress.org Like many other special interests in Washington, the corporate agribusiness lobby has for years done an outstanding job of securing tens of billions of dollars in subsidies for well-connected corporate farmers. With the farm bill set to expire in October, its reauthorization provides an important opportunity to stop wasting taxpayer dollars on corporate welfare for wealthy agribusiness. In fact, lawmakers this week reached a tentative deal to increase farm subsidies by $70 billion over the last farm bill. The structure of the current legislation contains enough loopholes to make a beetle proud. In many ways the bill is responsible for everything that is wrong with the agriculture industry today and it has all but failed in providing much needed support to small family farmers. Currently, sixty percent of American farmers receive no subsidies at all and the top 10 percent of subsidy recipients receive three-quarters of federal farm dollars. The untold story of the farm bill is that it does very little for average farmers and producers, but will drive up spending significantly to benefit an even smaller number of powerful recipients. Current farm bill legislation is expected to cost at least $171 billion over 10 years and the biggest slices of the pie are still likely to go to wealthy corporate farmers. Even the current farm policy would cost about $107 billion over the next decade. Taxpayer-financed subsidies for some crops have encouraged the largest farms to keep producing more in an endless quest for even more federal funds. This insatiable thirst has led the largest growers (and subsidy recipients) to gobble up as much land as they can and consequently drive many small family farm operations out of business. The overproduction then leads to a glut of products on the market, depressed prices, and sometimes the requirement for even more taxpayer dollars to be used to remove the surplus of goods from the market. Recently, on a bipartisan basis, the House voted to uphold a Senate provision that would cap farm payments at $225,000 for individuals or $275,000 per married couple. This is a step in the right direction. Payment caps will help control the total costs of farm subsidy programs and insure that financial support is available for those who need them the most -- small family farmers. However, despite this decision by both the full House and Senate, the conference committee has ignored their wishes and increased the payment cap to $360,000. If Congress is truly concerned with rooting out waste in the farm bill, they should also boot "farmers" who don't actually farm off the federal dole. Almost 20 percent of the total number of commodity payments has gone to absentee landlords, or farmland owners who don't even farm, according to a soon-to-be released report by Taxpayers for Common Sense. These modern day feudal lords are allowed to claim a share of commodity program payments as long as their land is rented to farmers through a crop-share agreement. Absentee landlords are living high on the hog at taxpayer expense and at the same time making it harder for other farmers to earn a living. Under a typical crop-sharing arrangement, landlords contribute the land and a pre-arranged portion of other farming inputs in return for a share of the crop sales and a share of the farm commodity program payments for which the farming operation is eligible. These arrangements between landlords and tenants typically range from 33 to 67 percent, in which the tenants keep two-thirds of crop revenue and commodity program payments, to 50 to 50 percent arrangements. Nearly two-thirds of all farmland eligible for commodity program payments in the year 2000 was rented from absentee landlords. With such a skewed set of priorities, it's no wonder that the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act has been nicknamed "Freedom to Fail," and that Willie Nelson and friends are still holding benefit concerts to raise money for small family farmers. It's time for Congress to level the farm playing field by allowing smaller farms to get a bigger portion of the farm subsidy pie, instead of just the crumbs. Payment caps are a step in the right direction, but more can be done.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (280941)	7/27/2002 4:38:24 PM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 769670

THE ENERGY BILL SCAM progress.org With the passage of the Senate Energy Bill last week, our national energy policy has become the poster child for all that is wrong with Washington. Every stage of the Energy Bill's design and creation has involved the securing of massive welfare handouts for wealthy corporate interests. The story begins with the energy industry contributing millions of dollars to the campaigns of Democrats and Republicans in Congress. It should come as no surprise that those "contributions" bought industry unprecedented access and influence over the legislative process, and set in motion a policy process that resulted in legislation that dishes out billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits to very profitable companies. The interest of the broader public was forced into the wings when the President's energy task force held closed-door meetings with industry executives where they were asked to play the role of Il Duce in creating a wish list for their industries. Rather than the long-term interests of the nation's pocket book or the public good, when the President released his national energy strategy, corporate profits received the most attention. The House followed in lock step with consideration of H.R. 4, the House Energy package passed last August. It includes a whopping $33 billion in tax credits and incentives for energy companies, including new subsidies for oil, gas, nuclear, coal and electric utilities, but offers little to taxpayers and consumers. Legislation passed by the Senate last week was almost as bad. More outrageous than the overall content of the bill, however, was how billions of dollars in corporate giveaways were tacked onto the bill with little or no debate. One such provision would mandate the use of ethanol in gasoline, and increase the use of ethanol to five billion gallons by the year 2012. When the five billion gallon mark is reached, the ethanol mandate will cost taxpayers about $2.5 billion annually. Also included in this section is a provision that would protect companies from being sued should the ethanol mandate have a detrimental effect on either the environment or the public health. Should any clean-up costs be incurred, as has happened with the MTBE mandate in California, taxpayers would more than likely be liable for those costs. Another lucky recipient was the Healy Clean Coal Plant in Alaska. After having received over $117 million in federal subsidies to experiment with Clean Coal, this project-gone-bad now wants the feds to pay for them to retrofit back to a traditional coal-burning plant. With absolutely no debate, the Senate earmarked $125 million more in loan guarantees for Healy to correct their past mistakes. The Bonneville Power Administration in Oregon also struck gold when in the eleventh hour they were guaranteed $1.3 billion in new borrowing authority despite the fact that they have an atrocious record on being accountable for the billions in borrowing authority that they've already received. This nearly doubled the $700 million dollars requested for BPA in the President's budget for 2003, yet there was no Senate debate and no vote. Then there is the story of the Alaska Gas Pipeline. In exchange for building a natural gas pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to major U.S. markets, gas companies will receive a new tax subsidy that provides a federal guarantee on the future price that they will receive at the end of the pipe. Energy consultants can't even predict how much this may cost taxpayers, yet the Senate passed the legislation without a public debate. Energy legislation's next step is conference committee where, if last week's outcome on the Farm Bill is any indication of what will happen now, it's likely that the negotiations between the House and Senate Energy Bills will only sweeten the pot and leave Democracy out in the cold. This is just one example of how serious national policy debates have turned into pork fests for every special interest in Washington. It is a sorry state of things when industry antes up campaign cash to get the invitation to write the policy, then spreads around even more money to secure its eventual passage into law, and at the end of the day has a few extra goodies added to sweeten the special interest grab-bag that Congress and the administration call "energy policy." The country certainly needs a real debate about its energy future, but participation shouldn't be limited to the highest bidders.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (280941)	7/27/2002 4:44:08 PM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 769670

Why We Need to Abolish Corporate Welfare by Todd Altman July 26, 2001 members.aol.com Corporate welfare is defined by the Cato Institute as "any government spending program that provides unique benefits or advantages to specific companies or industries." Although welfare in general is morally wrong, corporate welfare is the worst transfer payment of all, because it constitutes stealing from the poor in order to give to the rich. Examples of such giveaways can be found online at the Banneker Center's corporate welfare shame page. The federal government currently spends roughly $87 billion a year on programs that provide subsidies to private businesses. Not only does this give big business an unfair advantage over smaller competitors, it gives politicians an excuse to deny much-needed tax relief to the bottom 75% of taxpayers -- those who, according to the Tax Foundation, make less than $52,965 a year. Specifically, the bottom 75% (almost 93 million people) pay approximately $144.4 billion a year in federal income taxes -- with those who make below $26,415 (the bottom 50%) paying a little over $35.1 billion, and those who make between $26,415 and $52,965 paying the rest. Thus, if we eliminated corporate welfare, that alone would allow for the income tax to be reduced by nearly 1/2 for those making between $26,415 and $52,965, and abolished entirely for those making below $26,415. This would benefit wage-earners enormously by offsetting the regressive nature of the payroll tax, and would benefit small businesses by eliminating the anticompetitive nature of corporate welfare spending.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (280941)	7/27/2002 4:47:28 PM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 769670

Medicare Fraud Government urges elderly to be Medicare fraud detectives icrsurvey.com By ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Older Americans should learn to spot overcharges and other fraud on their Medicare statements, then report problems to the government, Attorney General Janet Reno and other officials said Wednesday. "Medicare beneficiaries are the first line of defense" against billing fraud, Reno said. Patients know the dates and times they see their doctors and what the doctors did, Reno said. Charges for anything else should trigger the suspicion that fraud might be involved, she said. Administrators and enforcement officials at a news conference tried to draw more attention to anti-fraud efforts, pointing out a government hotline and new public service advertisements that depict Medicare fraud as a dripping faucet. "We're actually asking you to be the eyes and ears of the Medicare system," Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala said. "If you're suspicious, call." Shalala said the patient's doctor or the HHS fraud watchdog line at 1-800-HHS-TIPS should be called. Close scrutiny of Medicare bills are likely to turn up more examples of billing mistakes than of actual fraud, officials said. Reno and Shalala both characterized most doctors and hospitals as honest and suggested many billing problems can be corrected with a simple call to the doctor's office. Still, the anti-fraud campaign represents an insulting wedge between doctors and patients, said American Medical Association President Dr. Nancy Dickey. "The government's tactics are lamentable," Dickey said in a statement. "It is counterproductive to demonize the entire medical community with the broad brush of fraud, waste and abuse." Medicare lost about $12 billion - 7 cents of every dollar spent – to fraud, waste and mistakes in 1998, government auditors said this month. The loss is about half what it was two years ago, due in part to stepped-up enforcement, Shalala said. Meanwhile, a survey released in conjunction with the anti-fraud effort indicated Americans believe fraud runs rampant in the health-care system and that little is done to curb it. Almost 90 percent of those surveyed believe health-care fraud is increasing or holding steady, and close to eight in 10 said they are unaware of efforts to reduce the problem, the survey released by AARP suggested. About 80 percent of those surveyed thought health-care fraud is either extremely widespread or somewhat widespread. The December 1998 telephone survey of 2,000 adults by ICR/International Communications Research of Media, Pa., has a margin of error of 2 percentage points. The American Association of Retired Persons, the largest organization of older Americans, will pay to train a volunteer corps of Medicare detectives. Those tutors will then teach larger groups of elderly people how to read their bills.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (280941)	7/27/2002 4:54:38 PM
From: greenspirit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

HELP STOP MEDICARE FRAUD and ABUSE medicareoutreach.org Medicare fraud and abuse is a serious problem that costs taxpayers billions of dollars a year. You can help reduce fraud and abuse by questioning Medicare statements when you don't understand a billed service and reporting fraud and abuse when you find it. Rampant fraud and abuse causes the number and quality of Medicare and Medicaid services to be reduced. It causes Medicare premiums and deductibles to be increased. Please protect yourself and others by learning to recognize and report Medicare Fraud and Abuse. Just how much does Medicare Fraud and Abuse cost us as taxpayers? The United States General Accounting Office estimates that $1 out of every $7 spent on Medicare is lost to fraud and abuse. In 1999 alone, Medicare lost nearly $13.5 billion to fraudulent or unnecessary claims. This problem affects all Americans. It affects those who depend on Medicare by diminishing the quality of treatment they receive. It affects caregivers by decreasing the funding available for important programs. And it affects everyone who pays taxes by wasting billions of tax dollars.