Downsizing Blog
Waste in Military Purchasing
The longest running show on Broadway is The Phantom of the Opera at 27 years. The longest running show on television is Meet the Press at 68 years. The longest running show of waste in Washington is cost overruns on Pentagon weapon systems. That show has been ongoing for more than 220 years.
Trump Tax Plan Would Increase Tax Eaters
Data from the Tax Policy Center show that 45 percent of U.S. households (“tax units”) will pay no federal income tax in 2015. That figure has risen in recent decades. In raw numbers, 94 million households will pay some income tax in 2015, while 78 million will pay none. As the TPC table shows, virtually all higher-income households pay income tax, while the nonpayers are mainly in the bottom half.
Government Failure: The Role of Congress
In a romantic view of democracy, legislators act with the interests of the general public in mind. They grapple with policy issues, work toward a broad consensus, and pass legislation that has strong support. They frequently reevaluate existing programs and prune the low-value and harmful ones. They put citizens first and limit their actions to those allowable under the U.S. Constitution.
Federal Bureaucratic Failure
The federal government spends almost $4 trillion a year. It has hundreds of agencies and runs more than 2,300 subsidy programs. It employs 2.1 million civilian workers, 1.4 million uniformed military personnel, and 560,000 postal workers. It is a huge organization.
Federal Government Cost Overruns
We have released a study looking at cost overruns on government projects, such as weapon systems, light rail systems, and VA hospital construction.
Waste in Federal Property Management
The Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released a report finding waste in the department’s vast warehousing of equipment and supplies. Here are a few examples of the problems found by the IG:
Washington's Largest Monument: Government Debt
The federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars more each year than it collects in taxes. Those large budget deficits are financed by issuing growing amounts of debt. Federal debt now totals more than $13 trillion, or about $107,000 for every household in the nation.
Federal Nuclear Clean Up: $150 Billion
Cleaning up the government’s nuclear weapons sites has become a vast sinkhole for taxpayer dollars. The Department of Energy (DOE) spends about $6 billion a year on environmental clean up of federal nuclear sites. These sites were despoiled in the decades following World War II with little notice taken by Congress. Then during the 1980s, a series of reports lambasted DOE for its lax safety and environmental standards, and federal polices began to change.
Hurricane Katrina: Remembering the Federal Failures
Ten years ago this week, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast and generated a huge disaster. The storm flooded New Orleans, killed more than 1,800 people, and caused $100 billion in property damage. The storm’s damage was greatly exacerbated by the failures of Congress, the Bush administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Army Corps of Engineers.