{"id":2234,"date":"2011-12-21T17:29:08","date_gmt":"2011-12-22T01:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/?p=2234"},"modified":"2011-12-21T17:29:44","modified_gmt":"2011-12-22T01:29:44","slug":"sen-coburn-releases-new-report-on-wasteful-government-spending-in-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/sen-coburn-releases-new-report-on-wasteful-government-spending-in-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Coburn Releases New Report on Wasteful Government Spending in 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Washington – Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK)<\/a> today released a new oversight report, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wastebook 2011\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that highlights over $6.5 billion in examples of some of the most egregious ways your taxpayer dollars were wasted. This report details 100 of the countless unnecessary, duplicative and low-priority projects spread throughout the federal government.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Video games, robot dragons, Christmas trees, and magic museums. This is not a Christmas wish list, these are just some of the ways the federal government spent your tax dollars. Over the past 12 months, politicians argued, debated and lamented about how to reign in the federal government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s out of control spending. All the while, Washington was on a shopping binge, spending money we do not have on things we do not absolutely need. Instead of cutting wasteful spending, nearly $2.5 billion was added each day in 2011 to our national debt, which now exceeds $15 trillion,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dr. Coburn said.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Congress cannot even agree on a plan to pay for the costs of extending jobless benefits to the millions of Americans who are still out of work. Yet, thousands of millionaires are receiving unemployment benefits and billions of dollars of improper payments of unemployment insurance are being made to individuals with jobs and others who do not qualify. And remember those infamous bridges to nowhere in Alaska that became symbols of government waste years ago? The bridges were never built, yet the federal government still spent more than a million dollars just this year to pay for staff to promote one of the bridges.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Examples of wasteful spending highlighted in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wastebook 2011\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em> include<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 $75,000 to promote awareness about the role Michigan plays in producing Christmas trees & poinsettias.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 $15.3 million for one of the infamous Bridges to Nowhere in Alaska.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 $113,227 for video game preservation center in New York.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 $550,000 for a documentary about how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 $48,700 for 2nd annual Hawaii Chocolate Festival, to promote Hawaii\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chocolate industry.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 $350,000 to support an International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 $10 million for a remake of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sesame Street\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for Pakistan.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 $35 million allocated for political party conventions in 2012.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 $765,828 to subsidize \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pancakes for yuppies\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s capital.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 $764,825 to study how college students use mobile devices for social networking.<\/p>\n

Read the full report: here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington – Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) today released a new oversight report, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wastebook 2011\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that highlights over $6.5 billion in examples of some of the most egregious ways your taxpayer dollars were wasted. This…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[344,11],"tags":[4234,4233,4236,1717,4237,4238,4235],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2234"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/savingtherepublic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}