(Washington, D.C.) – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW)
(CAGW) celebrates All Hallow’s Eve with its annual compendium of scary, grotesque, and spine-tingling examples of wasteful government spending. The list of nominees for inclusion in this Fiscal House of Horrors was longer than last year, as it was difficult to unearth the full breadth of the mayhem. So consider this as a shadow of the creepy crawlies lurking around corners and skulking down every dark stairwell, nook and cranny of the federal government. Not one agency is free of the scourge of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. Be very afraid…
Here are a couple from CAGW, but you’ll have to read the rest yourself at the link …..
Trick:Obamacare – The ghastly parade of horribles related to Obamacare continues unabated. On March 11, 2014, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a delay in federal Obamacare exchange enrollment and 2015 premium prices until after the elections. Like the Walking Dead, there seems to be no end to the long line of politically-motivated machinations designed to hide the true depravity of the law.
Trick or Treat? Are Earmarks Withering like Dorian Gray’s Portrait or Slithering Back in the Dark? Even though Congress certified that the fiscal year (FY) 2014 appropriations bills were earmark-free according to its definition, CAGW found 109 earmarks costing taxpayers $2.7 billion, the second lowest amount since CAGW began tracking earmarks in FY 1991. At the very least, the earmark moratorium has succeeded in decreasing the number and cost of earmarks under anyone’s criteria. However, only a few of these 109 projects carried sufficient information to determine who requested the project and where the money was being directed. Added to the fact that members of Congress are no longer required to add their names to earmarks, transparency in the appropriations process has been reduced immeasurably.
Treat: Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository Is Alive! And, in this case, that is good for taxpayers and utility ratepayers. On October 16, 2014, after trying to bury it deep within the bureaucracy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued its Yucca Mountain Safety Evaluation Report 3. The report confirms that the Yucca Mountain, Nevada site meets all the NRC’s safety requirements for the safe long-term storage of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel. The Department of Energy and taxpayers have oozed an estimated $20 billion annually because of the agency’s failure to comply with the law. It is time to revivify the Yucca Mountain program.