- Joined
- Aug 22, 2012
- Messages
- 7,329
I have a simple question. When I donated money to my son's school district, they sent me an itemized report of how it was spent. The same with Melbourne Art Gallery.
That was all. Be it donations or taxes, I never ever got an itemized report of how my money was spent.
Same with the government. How can we discuss their spending, if we do not even know their budget? At.least I do not. Perhaps if we do, we can talk about government spending? Take military budget. Everyone says it is extreme. I would like to know another issue, how many jobs does it create? Is there outsourcing? Are we donating to other countries and supporting useless regimes? Things like this. I suspect there are some parasites who we do not need to support (but support, at the expense of own people), but at the same time, figires are not published. So we can not talk about "expenses".
We can talk about expenses because it is public information if you care to look or ask for it. All government agencies waste money.
Every year at the end of the fiscal year there is a scramble to spend the rest of the money they are given for their budget because they did not use it. Depending on the agency it could be millions or billions. They buy things they do not really need because if they do not use the money their budget will be reduced for the next fiscal allotment.
Have you ever been to a government auction? Pallets stacked with never used items, vehicles with little miles because it was time to get new ones, all with original purchase information because that is part of the accountability so we can see how much was really spent. Items sold for pennies that cost the taxpayers thousands or tens of thousands.
Hiring consultants at 10X what it would cost staff to do the same thing. I don't by into the argument that the government should subsidize businesses by hiring them to do what staff could do. There is a certain percentage of work that is hired out with this idea but it should not be at 10X the staff cost. Negotiate a better deal. Government contracts should not be a gravy train. That goes for all contracts - military, environmental, healthcare, etc.
Those are things I have seen with my own eyes.
Then there is the fraud in all programs. Take care of that before you add new programs.
Subsidies. I am against the government subsidizing any industry be it energy or farming or whatever. If an industry cannot survive on its own it should fail. Because continued subsidizing leads to the gravy train mentality discussed above.
Grants for things that local areas should be paying for themselves.
There are some doozies here and it is equally spread across party lines.
https://www.cagw.org/
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