Senator flags $1.3 billion as gov't waste

[babylonsister]

Senator flags $1.3 billion as gov't waste

Idaho State Journal via AP

One Idaho farmer benefited from nearly $300,000 in Agriculture Department funds to market his potatoes, a new report claims.

By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY


WASHINGTON — As the budget deficit soared, infrastructure crumbled and the economy tanked, the federal government this year spent $300,000 for a California skateboarding park, $188,000 to research Maine lobsters and $3.2 million on a spy blimp the military doesn't want, according to a new report by the Senate's self-styled spending scourge.

The report, to be released today by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., lists more than $1.3 billion of what it calls wasteful projects in 2008.

Coburn, who often seeks to force votes and debates on projects inserted by fellow senators, says he wants to work with President-elect Barack Obama, who promised last month to go over the federal budget line by line and "eliminate programs we don't need."

"He has a great opportunity to change things, and my hope is that he will," Coburn said in an interview.

Obama and Coburn joined in 2006 on legislation that created USAspending.gov, which tracks federal spending.

Other items in the report:

• Various federal agencies spent $167,290 for portrait paintings of Cabinet officers.

• The federal Institute of Museums and Library Sciences awarded a $3,905 grant to the public library in Westfield, Ind., for the purchase of a Nintendo Wii console, a television, a camcorder and games.

• The Agriculture Department gave $298,068 to an Idaho farmer to help him advertise and market his specialty potatoes sold mainly to high-end restaurants.

• The Small Business Administration guaranteed $82 million in loans for 331 liquor stores, including Spanky's Liquor World and Pistol Pete's Beef N' Beer.

• Five members of Congress spent nearly $22,000 to stay three nights at a luxury hotel on the Galapagos Islands, the South American archipelago where Charles Darwin mulled his theory of evolution. That figure doesn't include the cost of the Air Force jet placed at their disposal.

"This is just an indication of how out of touch Washington is with the real world priorities of people in this country," Coburn said, adding that the report chronicled only a sliver of ill-advised federal spending. "How many bridges could we repair for $1.3 billion? … How many schools could be in better shape?"

more...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-12-11-govwaste_N.htm?csp=34

[RoyGBiv]

1. Tread lightly ...

Tom Coburn is 1) a fucking moron, 2) a liar, and 3) a lying fucking moron.

He's done this sort of thing before. Actually, many have. He compiles a list of "wasteful" programs or expenditures and labels them a certain way that, while accurate, doesn't present the full picture.

Now, certainly much waste exists, and Coburn probably has hit on some of it, but I'd like to draw attention to one item for your consideration:

* The Small Business Administration guaranteed $82 million in loans for 331 liquor stores, including Spanky's Liquor World and Pistol Pete's Beef N' Beer.

Now, I don't know anything about Spanky's or Pistol Pete's specifically (the last, anyway, sounds like something in Oklahoma near Stillwater), but I do know something about the SBA loans. A friend of mine got one years and years ago, and he just happened to use it for starting a liquor store.

I'd worked with him actually. I managed an upscale liquor store in Oklahoma. Previously, this friend had been my manager at one of my first jobs in a convenience store, and he was down on his luck at the time, so I gave him a few part-time hours at the booze shack as I could budget for them. He used that knowledge, combined it with his business degree, figured out about the SBA loans and some special options of minorities (his mother was black, his father Cherokee), and he started his own liquor store. He ended up doing pretty well with a full-time job at a business he owned, employing three others. He no longer needed food stamps, and he was able to purchase his own insurance.

Say what you want about liquor stores. They are legal businesses. If one doesn't like them, that's another discussion, but in this context, I'd say it was money well spent.

[theoldman]

2. A liquor store is a very good business.

If most customers are like me they will buy booze even if their income is reduced.

[RoyGBiv]

3. Indeed ...

Kinda sad, actually, but there you have it ...

They are best for people who have a general aversion to alcohol. The owners I knew who did poorly tended to be those who were their own best customers.

[catnhatnh]

4. 188K to study lobsters in Maine?

JEEZUS....what a waste...enough for a small boat and one or two people to spend a year to look into why a 300 year old mainstay of 100's of miles of coastline is collapsing...oh,yeah ASSCLOWN-just like a skateboard park.