Your money

[Highwayman]

How’s our new Congress doing with our money? Today’s report from Citizens Against Government Waste;

CAGW Condemns Senate Democrats’ Budget

Washington, D.C. -- Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today blasted Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad’s (D-N.D.) budget proposal. Senate Democrats plan to raise taxes and spending without cutting wasteful programs while ignoring the increasing costs of entitlements.

“This plan is fiscally irresponsible and economically unsound,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.

Sen. Conrad claims that his budget will produce a surplus by 2012 without raising taxes. However, his projections assume the Bush tax cuts will expire in 2010, which in effect raises taxes. He leaves open the possibility of extending the tax cuts if they are paid for, but does not elaborate as to how that would be accomplished. Allowing the tax cuts to expire will create the biggest tax increase in history: $900 billion.

Senate Democrats rejected President Bush’s proposals to cut or eliminate 141 programs to save $12 billion over five years. Congress has no excuse for failing to identify and eliminate wasteful spending. CAGW’s annual Prime Cuts 2007, to be released in April, will offer 602 recommendations for saving $1.7 trillion over five years.

Under Sen. Conrad’s plan, domestic agencies would receive an average annual budget increase of almost 5 percent. The budget includes an additional $6 billion for education and $3.5 billion for veterans’ health care over the president’s request.

To offset this increased spending, the plan aims to increase government revenue by closing the so-called tax gap and offshore tax loopholes. However, many Democrats are opposed to the use of private collection agencies the most efficient and cost-effective way to collect taxes owed to the IRS. Furthermore, it would be far more productive to create a friendlier business climate by lowering the corporate tax rate so that companies migrate to, rather than leave, the United States. Simply put, the Democrats’ proposals will fail to offset the new spending.

Most alarmingly, the budget ignores the approaching tidal wave of entitlement spending, allowing it to grow until it eventually crashes on future generations; entitlement spending will reach 20 percent of the gross national product by 2050. After rejecting President Bush’s plan to save $95.9 billion in mandatory spending over five years, Democrats have no plan of their own to confront stark budget realities.

Sen. Conrad only slightly improves upon President Bush’s one-year Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) solution with a two-year fix. Short-term AMT relief allows policy makers to make rosier budget forecasts based on false assumptions.

“With a massive tax hike, spending increases without any spending cuts, and no long-term budget solutions, this budget is a bust for American taxpayers. Clearly, Democrats are not delivering on their campaign promise to bring fiscal responsibility to Washington,” Schatz concluded.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.

Citizens Against Government Waste: CAGW Condemns Senate Democrats' Budget

The Porkers are Back: Congress Fattens Up Emergency Supplemental

Washington, D.C. -- Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today criticized the House of Representatives for out-of-control spending and unrelated policy provisions in the emergency war supplemental bill. President Bush requested $103 billion in emergency spending for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and disaster relief. The House Appropriations Committee included an additional $21 billion in the U.S. Readiness, Veterans’ Health and Iraq Accountability Act, 2007, that is being marked up today.

“By passing earmark reforms, Congress signaled that it was serious about restoring fiscal responsibility to the budget process,” CAGW President Tom Schatz said. “It seems the commitment to reform was short-lived, as Congress fattens up the emergency spending bill with special-interest goodies.”

Below is a list of spending and policy provisions in the supplemental that are unrelated to military operations.

$500 million for emergency wildfires suppression; the Forest Service currently has $831 million for this purpose;


$400 million for rural schools;


$283 million for the Milk Income Loss Contract program;


$120 million to compensate for the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the shrimp and menhaden fishing industries;


$100 million for citrus assistance;


$74 million for peanut storage costs;


$60.4 million for salmon fisheries in the Klamath River region in California and Oregon;


$50 million for asbestos mitigation at the U.S. Capitol Plant;


$48 million in salaries and expenses for the Farm Service Agency;


$35 million for NASA risk mitigation projects in Gulf Coast;


$25 million for spinach growers;


$25 million for livestock;


$20 million for Emergency Conservation Program for farmland damaged by freezing temperatures;


$16 million for security upgrades to House of Representatives office buildings;


$10 million for the International Boundary and Water Commission for the Rio Grande Flood Control System Rehabilitation project;


$6.4 million for House of Representative’s Salaries and Expenses Account for business continuity and disaster recovery expenses;


$5 million for losses suffered by aquaculture businesses including breeding, rearing, or transporting live fish as a result of viral hemorrhagic septicemia;


$4 million for the Office of Women’s Health at the Food and Drug Administration; and


A minimum wage increase, which is the subject of separate legislation.

Supplemental appropriations bills are exempt from spending caps and other budget controls, which makes them magnets for projects and programs that might not stand up to the scrutiny of the budget process. Members of Congress know that the President is unlikely to veto a bill that is meant to meet the needs of troops in the field. The Senate version of the fiscal 2006 emergency appropriations bill included $700 million for the “Railroad to Nowhere” in Mississippi, but public criticism led conferees to remove that provision and others in order to pass a final version in line with the President’s request.

“Members of Congress will pay a price if they go back to the usual pork-barrel politics. Taxpayers must demand that Congress remove the waste and bloat from the final bill and stop the routine abuse of emergency spending,” Schatz concluded.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

Citizens Against Government Waste: The Porkers are Back: Congress Fattens Up Emergency Supplemental

[lurker]

Nice post, but how do you ask a drunkard to not take a drink?

Nicely?

Forcefully?


or

Withhold the booze!!

[Highwayman]

I’m with you Lurker, but these drunks have the key to the liquor cabinet.

[lurker]

They only have possession of the key. It's (still) our money.

[booger]

And we tolerate this crap.

[lurker]

I guess we tolerate it because it's easier than fixing it. Way too many crybabies in Washington demanding their handouts from CONgress that we pay for AND we'll continue to pay their bills because CONgress has opened us up as a source of freely flowing money.

They'll never stop it and the only way we can stop it is through Citizen's Initiatives.

[Made in the USA]

[quote=lurker;36197]I guess we tolerate it because it's easier than fixing it. Way too many crybabies in Washington demanding their handouts from CONgress that we pay for AND we'll continue to pay their bills because CONgress has opened us up as a source of freely flowing money.[quote]

Kinda like WND money, right??

[lurker]

Here's the perfect example of bureaucracy:

The following HutchNews story tells of how Kansans were told that allowing gambling at horse races was a revenue generator for the state. It was legislated into existence and a bureaucracy was created to enforce the rules and collect revenue. Enter the Horse Race Dates in Kansas

Times have changed and the revenue collected doesn't even meet the bureau's operating $1,000,000.00+ expenses. Standard business practice would downsize the bureau, absorb it within another bureau or even eliminate it; BUT NOOOOOO WAAAAY JOSE! Government doesn't exist within efficiencies so the answer is to take money from another source to preserve the bureau.

Horse and dog racing's future in Kansas is in doubt as wagering has declined significantly

By Scott Rothschild

The Associated Press

TOPEKA - When Kansas voters approved wagering on horse and dog tracks in 1986, they were told it would be a big moneymaker for the state economy.

Twenty years later, the amount of money bet on races has fallen to the point that the tracks don't even generate enough in wagering taxes to cover the cost of the state to regulate them.

"Things have completely flipped in Kansas," said Kansas Racing and Gaming Commission executive director Stephen Martino.

The Racing and Gaming Commission's budget for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1, is projected to be approximately $1 million short, which will require some kind of bailout.

In 1990 in Kansas, the handle - the amount wagered - was $273.4 million. Since then the handle has plummeted, setting record lows year after year to $79.7 million last year.

Taxes from live and simulcast pari-mutuel wagering are expected to drop nearly 45 percent, from $2.2 million in fiscal year 2006 to $1.7 million in the fiscal year that starts July 1.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has proposed using approximately $700,000 in Kansas Lottery funds that normally go to economic development projects to help make up the agency's shortfall.

Martino said adding slots is part of a national trend. "Tracks that have additional gaming, such as slots, do well, and those that don't are doing poorly," he said.

But attempts to allow casino-style games at the state's two major tracks - The Woodlands in Kansas City, Kan., and Wichita Greyhound Park - have repeatedly failed in the Kansas Legislature.

Despite talk in the Legislature again this year to revive efforts to put slots at the tracks, Glenn Thompson, executive director of the anti-gambling group Stand Up for Kansas, predicted no change.

"There's just as much opposition to casinos this year as there has ever been," he said.

Jim Gartland, a spokesman for The Woodlands, said riverboat casinos right across the river in Missouri, Indian casinos in northeast Kansas and the Kansas Lottery have taken a huge bite out of the gambling dollar.

"In this day and age of instant gratification, doing mindless gambling is easier than studying a racing program," Gartland said.

The lottery is expected to pump $67 million into the state budget this year, and lawmakers appear ready to drop a requirement that the lottery be reauthorized every five years.

Gartland said if the Legislature approved slots at the tracks it would help.

"We are kind of surrounded by casinos," he said.

Gartland declined to speculate on how long the tracks can go on. In 2000, a track in Frontenac shut down.

But Thompson said the tracks have for years said they may go under, but they continue on.

03/16/2007; 02:31:03 AM

FWIW, the Indian casino bureaucrat's website is worthy of a look-see:
COMPACTS AND TECHNICAL STANDARDS

[Made in the USA]

Casino gambling in Oklahoma and NE Kansas has killed the race track money!!

[The Drifter]

Originally Posted by Highwayman

How’s our new Congress doing with our money? Today’s report from Citizens Against Government Waste

Old congress did it, the congress before them did it, and the congresses to follow will do the same. Not just this one.

Why do we allow it to happen, well if your senator or house rep came up to you and said, i've just allocated 25 million dollars for cattlemen, and your a cattleman...wouldnt you vote for him again.

If your house rep or senator came and said I've gotten congress to get 30 million dollars for ice cream vendors and you're an ice cream vendor wouldnt you be happy.

It's a dumb process but all, no most(have to avoid the "allness fallacy") congressmen want to ensure a future vote for them so they use this pork barrel politics. It's horrible, but it works and they keep getting paid. Shady politics, but aren't they all, well most of them.