Are Your Tax Dollars Being Wasted?
Recent Feature Article
Published: November 6, 2005
In the wake of the recent hurricane calamities, many Americans are wondering how our government can spend $2.5 trillion a year ($6.8 billion a day) and still not have enough for disaster preparedness, such as reinforcing New Orleans’ levees and efficiently evacuating Houston and other cities.
One problem is “pork-barrel spending.” Every year, members of Congress try to gain funding for as many projects as possible in his or her district. Some of these “pork” projects actually help people who need it, but many others would seem unnecessary if they were in someone else’s district. I visited the sites of several of these projects to see how local citizens felt about them.
Ketchikan, Alaska (pop. 8,200) is a popular stop for cruise ships plying the Alaska Inland Passage. It lies in a borough of 13,500, which includes nearby Gravina Island (pop. 50), site of the Ketchikan airport. To get from the island to the town, passengers take a five-minute ferry ride.
At least, they do now. On July 29, Congress approved $223 million to construct a bridge to Gravina that eventually will cost at least $315 million. That’s more than $23,000 for each citizen of Ketchikan.
In July, I asked borough assemblyman Dave Kiffer how many people in Ketchikan supported the project. About half, he estimated. “The general feeling here,” he said, “is that if someone else is paying for it, sure, why not?”
However, on the streets of Ketchikan, I found few locals who were passionately in favor of The Bridge. Supporters said that its construction would create jobs. Even if jobs went to outsiders, the workers would be spending their salaries in Ketchikan.
Many opponents of The Bridge were more embarrassed than angry. One young man—who requested anonymity, fearing retribution from his pro-bridge boss—told me of his recent visit to the lower 48 states: Every time he drove over a pothole or got stuck in traffic, he said, he thought about The Bridge and figured the money could be better used elsewhere.
High school student Claire Ragozzino had just seen a TV news report about people starving in the African nation of Niger. “I wondered,” she said, “how many lives could be saved with the money allocated for The Bridge.”
Horse Springs Ranch is a cattle ranch in western New Mexico. Its owner will receive more than $2.5 million not to develop a parcel of his land—part of the government’s Forest Legacy Program, designed to preserve natural areas. This particular project would allow wildlife—such as elk, deer and antelopes—to pass freely on continuous undeveloped land from the Apache National Forest to land owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
I visited the ranch, about a three-hour drive from Albuquerque, with Bob Sivinski, the state’s Forest Legacy program manager. The Forest Service, Sivinski explained, hoped to prevent the ranch’s owner from subdividing a parcel of approximately 4,000 acres into 20- or 40-acre chunks, which people could buy and live on.
We were bumping along a trail on the acreage in question when suddenly a magnificent elk darted in front of our jeep and disappeared into the forest. It got me thinking: The ranch owner is being paid millions in taxpayer money to do nothing, yet when I doubt the usefulness of this expenditure, I picture that fantastic elk running in front of me.
Outrageous as some pork projects may be, they account for barely 1% of the federal budget—$27.3 billion in 2005. If all pork programs were miraculously suspended, the total would pay for about 18% of Gulf Coast recovery, now estimated at around $150 billion.
Of course, it’s next to impossible to nullify pork appropriations—though some have tried. After Katrina, a group of citizens in Bozeman, Mont., made national news when they petitioned the town council not to accept $4 million in pork earmarked for a parking garage. They were turned down, but many editorial writers picked up on the idea, and readers wrote letters of approval.
Meanwhile, Representatives and Senators squabbled in Congress over whose pork was expendable. In the end, legislators began to look elsewhere in the budget for the recovery money. In October, House leaders called for cuts in such social programs as Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and other programs for the indigent. Gulf Coast recovery must be paid for—but is it wise to further deprive all of the nation’s 37 million poor to aid the (highly visible) poor in a single region?
Unwise government spending comes in different guises: We give $10.3 billion a year to the Internal Revenue Service to collect taxes but only $493 million to the Government Accountability Office, the agency that oversees whether those tax dollars are spent efficiently. One-third of the annual U.S. budget goes to two areas: the military ($527 billion, as much for defense as all other nations combined) and interest on the national debt ($321 billion). Our national debt is $8 trillion, or $26,900 per person.
One positive outcome of the storms of late summer may be wiser spending, as Congress takes another look at how it uses its $2.5 trillion.
What You Can Do
•Educate yourself: Learn how money earmarked for your district or state is being spent. •Communicate: When your Senators and Representative brag about the expensive projects they plan to bring in,
tell them if you think the money could be better used elsewhere. •Contact organized groups that support programs you support.
Members of Congress are more likely to respond to suggestions from groups than from individuals. •To learn more about government waste, including state and district projects see:
Citizens Against
Government Waste
1301 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Suite 400 Washington, D.C. 20036
www.cagw.org
Taxpayers For Common Sense
651 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E.,
Washington, D.C. 20003
www.taxpayer.net
More Outlays To Ponder
Is there any defense for the following expenditures?
$250,000 to connect two ski resorts in New York—North Creek Ski Bowl and Gore Mountain Resort—so they can compete better with resorts in Vermont and New Hampshire. If you lived in Vermont or New Hampshire, how would you feel knowing your taxes were helping another state hurt your state’s economy?
$250,000 to Washington State University and Michigan State University for research to cut asparagus-industry labor costs by using mechanical harvesting to replace human harvesters. Why are taxpayers helping to eliminate jobs in the U.S.?
$200,000 to Ocean Spray, a cranberry- and grapefruit- growers’ cooperative, to market white cranberry juice in Great Britain. Ocean Spray cranberry juice is quite tasty, but why do we have to help the business sell its products overseas?
$2 million to construct a parking facility at the University of the Incarnate Word, a Catholic institution in San Antonio, Tex. According to www.campusdirt.com, 58% of students said that off-campus parking was “quick and easy.” Overall, parking at UIW was given a grade of “B”—without the lot.
$70,000 to the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame in Appleton, Wis. for construction and renovation. Is it just a coincidence that of the 70 inductees in the Hall of Fame, 22 (30%) were born in Wisconsin?
$26 million to operate the Selective Service (draft boards) even though there is no draft now—and hasn’t been any since 1973.
$519 million in farm subsidies (1995-2003) to Riceland Foods of Stuttgart, Ark., a co-op with 9,000 members, the world’s largest miller and marketer of rice. According to the Heritage Foundation, Riceland Foods receives more federal money in a typical year than all the farmers in 12 other states combined.
$300,000 for a feasibility study for the world’s first fully enclosed motor speedway, to be built in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley.
$150,000 to The Grammy Foundation to support Grammy Camp, where 60 high school students go to learn about the music business, including singing, songwriting and engineering. (Tuition, room and board is listed as $1,800.) Why are taxpayers helping the industry develop potential stars and other careers in the music business?
$775,000 to the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Fla.—part of a project to provide economic opportunity in areas of low or moderate income. (Coral Gables’ per capita income is 19.6% above the U.S. average.) For the luxury hotel’s minimum rate, about $200 a night, 130 hurricane survivors could stay there for a month each.
Contributing Editor David Wallechinsky took a close look at this year’s federal budget in “Where Does Your Tax Money Go?”
parade.com |
