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Wednesday, July 31, 2013

20 stupid things US waste tax dollars on


Government Waste: 20 Of The Craziest Things That The U.S. Government Is Spending Money On

By Michael Snyder

 

You are not going to believe some of the things that the U.S. government is spending money on.  According to a shocking new report, U.S. taxpayer money is being spent to study World of Warcraft, to study how Americans find love on the Internet, and to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.  Not only that, money from the federal government is also being used to renovate a pizzeria in Iowa and to help a library in Tennessee host video game parties.  These are just some of the examples in a new report on government waste from Senator Tom Coburn entitled "Wastebook 2010".  Even as tens of millions of American families find themselves suffering through the worst economic downturn in modern history, the U.S. government continues to spend money on some of the craziest and most frivolous things imaginable.  Every single year articles are written and news stories are done about the horrific government waste that is taking place and yet every single year it just keeps getting worse.  So just what in the world is going on here?

It almost seems as though Congress actually enjoys inventing new ways to waste U.S. taxpayer money.  It seems nearly inconceivable that anyone could keep a straight face while trying to justify spending money on many of the things in the list below.

At a time when the U.S. national debt is closing in on 17 trillion dollars, government waste just seems more out of control than ever.  The following are 20 of the craziest things that the U.S. government is spending money on....

#1 A total of $3 million has been granted to researchers at the University of California at Irvine so that they can play video games such as World of Warcraft.  The goal of this "video game research" is reportedly to study how "emerging forms of communication, including multiplayer computer games and online virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life can help organizations collaborate and compete more effectively in the global marketplace."

#2 The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the University of New Hampshire $700,000 this year to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.

#3 $615,000 was given to the University of California at Santa Cruz to digitize photos, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead.

#4 A Professor at Stanford University received $239,100 to study how Americans use the Internet to find love.  So far one of the key findings of this "research" is that the Internet is a safer and more discreet way to find same-sex partners.

#5 The National Science Foundation spent $216,000 to study whether or not politicians "gain or lose support by taking ambiguous positions."

#6 The National Institutes of Health spent approximately $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.

#7 Approximately $1 million of U.S. taxpayer money was used to create poetry for the Little Rock, New Orleans, Milwaukee and Chicago zoos.  The goal of the "poetry" is to help raise awareness on environmental issues.

#8 The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs spent $175 million during 2010 to maintain hundreds of buildings that it does not even use.  This includes a pink, octagonal monkey house in the city of Dayton, Ohio.

#9 $1.8 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars went for a "museum of neon signs" in Las Vegas, Nevada.

#10 $35 million was reportedly paid out by Medicare to 118 "phantom" medical clinics that never even existed.  Apparently these "phantom" medical clinics were established by a network of criminal gangs as a way to defraud the U.S. government.

#11 The Conservation Commission of Monkton, Vermont got $150,000 from the federal government to construct a "critter crossing".  Thanks to U.S. government money, the lives of "thousands" of migrating salamanders are now being saved.

#12 In California, one park received $440,000 in federal funds to perform "green energy upgrades" on a building that has not been used for a decade.

#13 $440,955 was spent this past year on an office for former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert that he rarely even visits.

#14 One Tennessee Library was given $5,000 in federal funds to host a series of video game parties.

#15 The U.S. Census Bureau spent $2.5 million on a television commercial during the Super Bowl that was so poorly produced that virtually nobody understood what is was trying to say.

#16 A Professor at Dartmouth University received $137,530 to create a "recession-themed" video game entitled "Layoff".

#17 The National Science Foundation gave the Minnesota Zoo over $600,000 so that they could develop an online video game called "Wolfquest".

#18 A pizzeria in Iowa was given $60,000 to renovate the pizzeria's facade and give it a more "inviting feel".

#19 The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave one enterprising group of farmers $30,000 to develop a tourist-friendly database of farms that host guests for overnight "haycations".  This one sounds like something that Dwight Schrute would have dreamed up.

#20 Almost unbelievably, the National Institutes of Health was given $800,000 in "stimulus funds" to study the impact of a "genital-washing program" on men in South Africa.

In light of all this, is it any wonder why the approval rating of Congress recently hit another new record low?

According to the most recent Gallup poll, only 13 percent of Americans approve of the job that Congress is doing.

Just think about that - only 13 percent!

Our politicians seem very confused about why there is so much anger in the country today.  Well, there are certainly a lot of reasons for it, including the fact that the U.S. economy is on the verge of collapse, but it certainly doesn't help that our government is basically flushing our tax dollars down the toilet and spending them on some of the most wasteful things imaginable.

It would be bad enough if the federal government was swimming in money, but the truth is that all of this waste is being committed at a time when the U.S. government is nearing bankruptcy.

Over the last 30 years, the U.S. national debt has gotten 13 times larger.  We have accumulated the largest debt in the history of the world and there is no end in sight.

In fact, we are rapidly running out of people to borrow money from.  According to the Wall Street Journal, in order to repay maturing bonds and finance the exploding budget deficit, the U.S. government will have to borrow 4.2 trillion dollars in 2011.

Eventually the rest of the world is going to lose confidence in the ability of the U.S. government to repay all of this debt.  Once confidence in U.S. Treasuries is totally gone, and there are already signs this is starting to happen, the game will be over and the U.S. financial system will collapse.

But the U.S. Congress just continues to act like it is "business as usual" and the wasteful spending just continues to get worse.  Someday historians will look back and think that we must have been a nation full of idiots and morons.

For decades our politicians have been spending us into oblivion, yet we keep sending the vast majority of them back to Washington D.C. every time an election rolls around and the mainstream media keeps assuring us that our "respected leaders" know exactly what they are doing and that everything is going to be okay somehow.

It is almost as if some sort of collective insanity has overtaken most Americans.  The path we are on inevitably leads to national bankruptcy and the destruction of our financial system, but only a small percentage of the population seems to care.

Well, in the end we will reap what we have sown.  Unfortunately, the economic pain that is coming is going to be devastating for all of us - including those of us who are awake and are trying desperately to change things.

 

.51 cents wasted for every tax dollar coming in.


September 19, 2011

Americans Say Federal Gov't Wastes Over Half of Every Dollar

by Jeffrey M. Jones

 

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans estimate that the federal government wastes 51 cents of every dollar it spends, a new high in a Gallup trend question first asked in 1979.



 

The current estimate of 51 cents wasted on the dollar is similar to what Gallup measured in 2009, but marks the first time Americans believe more than half of federal spending is wasted. The low point in the trend is 38 cents wasted on the dollar, in 1986.

Americans are less likely to believe state and local government’s waste money they spend than they are to believe this about the federal government, with the state estimate at 42 cents on the dollar and the local at 38 cents.

Americans have viewed the federal government as being the most wasteful of tax dollars -- and local government the least -- each time Gallup has asked these questions. That pattern is consistent with Americans' greater trust in state and local government than in the federal government. 

Over time, though, Americans have become increasingly likely to see all levels of government as being wasteful of tax dollars. Americans now believe all levels of government waste at least 11 cents more on the dollar compared with 1979.



 

Conservatives among Most Likely to See Federal Government Waste

Estimates of federal government waste do not vary greatly by political partisanship, with only a 5 cent difference between Republicans' and Democrats' averages, but show more differentiation by ideology. Conservatives are much more likely than liberals to view the federal government as wasting money.

Senior citizens' estimate of wasted federal dollars ranks with conservatives' as one of the highest, and is significantly greater than that of Americans aged 18 to 29.

Additionally, those with more formal education estimate proportionately less federal government waste than do Americans with less education.



 

 

The ideological differences observed this year were not apparent in 2001, when Republican George W. Bush was president. At that time, liberals estimated a larger share of federal spending was wasted than conservatives did, 48 cents to 44. Thus, one's perceptions of how much federal spending is wasted depend partly on the match between a person's ideological preferences and the prevailing power structure in Washington.

There are generally smaller political differences in perceptions of wasteful state and local spending vs. federal spending, though conservatives' estimate of how much money local government wastes is significantly higher than liberals'.

The sharp differences between young and old in terms of federal government spending are not apparent in their estimates of how much money state and local governments waste. But the differences by education are consistent, as those with postgraduate education are much less likely than those with no college education to see state and local governments as wasting money.

 



 

Implications

Over the last 30 years, Americans have become increasingly likely to see all levels of government as wasting the money they spend, and now the public believes the federal government wastes more than half of the money it spends. It is not clear whether Americans believe government wastes money because it spends on programs they believe are not needed, or because it does not spend money efficiently on programs, whether needed or not. Also, it is not clear whether Americans believe money is wasted more on discretionary government spending, or more on defense, entitlement programs, and interest on the debt -- which make up the bulk of federal government spending. 

In any case, the federal government has made efforts to rein in spending this year, as part of the 2011 budget and the deal to raise the debt ceiling limit. As part of that deal, a supercommittee of 12 members of Congress is now seeking additional areas for cuts, to avoid automatic cuts in defense and entitlement programs. State and local governments have also been forced to make cuts in order to balance budgets as revenues have come in lower as a result of the state of the economy. Still, with all of these efforts to curb spending, the average American does not appear to give government at all levels much credit for being careful in spending tax dollars.
 

Survey Methods

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Sept. 8-11, 2011, with a random sample of 1,017 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample includes a minimum quota of 400 cell phone respondents and 600 landline respondents per 1,000 national adults, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents by region. Landline telephone numbers are chosen at random among listed telephone numbers. Cell phone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.

Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, adults in the household, and phone status (cell phone only/landline only/both, cell phone mostly, and having an unlisted landline number). Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2010 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older non-institutionalized population living in U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting and sample design.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

View methodology, full question results, and trend data.

For more details on Gallup's polling methodology, visit www.gallup.com.

Pictures. Wishful thinking.

 
 
 
 
Picture Speaks A Thousands
Words
 
 
Wouldn't this look great dropped on Congress?
 
 

Sunday, July 28, 2013

IRS top executives spend $4.8 million tax dollars on travel


Pricey travel creates more IRS trouble
By: Rachael Bade
July 23, 2013 03:07 PM EDT
A handful of top Internal Revenue Service executives are spending “significant” amounts of taxpayer money traveling to Washington and living out of their suitcases for work, according to a new agency watchdog report.
Although the Treasury inspector general for tax administration released a report Tuesday that found the IRS followed federal rules and spent “reasonable” amounts of money on official travel, some IRS executives’ reimbursement checks set off alarm bells.
In 2011, for example, one top official received $161,000 from the IRS for travel expenses, which covered airfare, rental cars or taxis, hotel stays and a per diem for food or other necessities like laundry.

 “When you compare that to the average IRS executive [travel expenditure] — which is between $12,000 and $13,000 per year — you can see it’s quite a significant difference,” David Holmgren, TIGTA’s deputy inspector general for inspections and evaluations, said on a conference call with reporters Tuesday.

In total, the IRS spent more than $9 million in fiscal 2011 and 2012 sending top agency officials around the country for work — but that’s actually not that much, TIGTA said.

“Overall, executive travel does not appear to be excessive,” according to the report.

Even before the report was released, the agency’s acting leader, Daniel Werfel, said he was cutting back on employee travel costs. The agency reiterated that in a statement on Tuesday.

“The IRS has put in place new procedures to stop the practice of allowing executives to routinely leave their home office to travel to another city to conduct their principal work,” the IRS said. “The previous practice, while allowed under federal rules, is no longer appropriate for this tight fiscal environment.”

The findings come about a month after the same watchdog office reported that the IRS spent millions of dollars on lavish conferences between 2010 and 2012, prompting outrage on Capitol Hill.

The IRS is consumed in scandal after the agency acknowledged in May it wrongly scrutinized conservative groups applying for tax exemption. The agency came under additional scrutiny Tuesday from congressional Republicans seeking answers about whether the IRS released thousands of Social Security numbers to the public.

TIGTA looked into executive travel after receiving a tip “alleging possible noncompliance with tax ability provisions of travel,” Holmgren said.

Under the law, employees are supposed to pay taxes on certain expenses if they’re traveling in their work positions for more than a year. Over the next few months, the IRS watchdog will review whether IRS employees living out of their suitcases for work are following these rules.
A closer look at IRS expense reports revealed that much of the total travel cost was incurred by a small number of executives that had “extremely high travel expenses compared to the rest of the executives and that several executives frequently travel to the Washington, D.C., area to conduct day-to-day operations.”
About 4 percent of IRS executives — 15 people — accounted for 26 percent of the total $4.8 million spent on top-level travel expenses in fiscal 2011. That’s $1.2 million. In fiscal 2012, the agency spent $1.1 million on travel for 15 people — about 23 percent of the total $4.7 million in travel bills the agency fronted that year.
 
Compare that with the expense reports for 60 percent of IRS executives, which totaled about $10,000 or less on travel expenses for those same years.
Most of the executives with the priciest travel budgets lived around the country but traveled to Washington to perform their jobs, which are “national headquarters-types of positions where it appears the IRS selected the people they thought were best for the position, but the majority or all of them, in fact, were not here in the D.C. area,” Holmgren said.
In other words, most were hired to do Washington jobs but were allowed to commute at the agency’s expense.
Some of these people lived on the road for more than half a year, and a few even traveled more days than they worked at the IRS.
TIGTA estimates that there are about 250 IRS workdays each year between holidays and weekends, but one executive spent 321 days and 298 nights on the road. Ten of them — five each year — were on the road for more than 180 days.
In fiscal 2011, the top 15 executives with the biggest travel expenses were on the road or stayed at hotels for an average of 202 days, each incurring travel expenses of about $81,544 that year. The following year, the top 15 averaged 184 days of travel, about $73,054.
“The cost and frequency of travel for these executives indicate that they may not live in the best location to economically accomplish their roles and responsibilities,” the report says, detailing executive travel averaged 40 days in fiscal 2011 and 38 days in fiscal 2012.
 
Despite the high numbers, the IRS didn’t break any rules.
“We found no misconduct within the IRS on executive travel,” Holmgren said. “There’s nothing that says any particular executive or the service itself was doing anything improper.”
Still, the IRS could be more efficient, he said.
Holmgren told reporters the cost of relocating employees “could be significantly less than long-term travel.”
“While the Federal Travel Regulation does not set any total monetary or duration limits on temporary duty travel, the IRS should consider a temporary or permanent change of station as an alternative to long-term temporary duty travel,” the report suggests.
TIGTA also recommends that the IRS’s chief financial officer do a cost-benefit analysis of long-term travel situations.
Because of the review process, the IRS has already taken steps to address the problem. In April, for example, it began restricting travel to 75 nights a year.
“It is encouraging that in response to TIGTA’s findings, the IRS is taking action to better control executive travel,” TIGTA chief J. Russell George said in a statement.

 

 

Pentagon waste $31K on oil painting.


Pentagon Signs $31K Contract for Oil Portrait of Leon Panetta

10:09 AM, Jul 22, 2013 • By JERYL BIER

 

Once again the Pentagon finds its way in a dilemma.  What to do with $31K dollars? Should we use it to pay down U.S.  $17 trillion dollar debt? Feed the homeless? “I know,” let’s purchase an oil painting to cover up that hole in the wall caused by us, but we blamed it on 9-11. I want to know who in the hell is just sitting down writing these checks from this unlimited bank account. Does anyone say NO!

Washington D.C. is big on tradition, and one of those traditions involves official portraits of top government officials.  The Defense Department just awarded a $31,200 contract (frame included) to Portraits, Inc. for an official portrait of former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta:

The Washington Headquarters Services Acquisition Directorate issued a Firm-Fixed Price (FFP) purchase order for the painting and delivery of the official oil portrait for the former Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, as required by the Department of Defense.

 

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Important Misc. Quotes. please look







United States launched a $200 million program to boost the role of women in Afghanistan
By Rob Taylor and Folad Hamdard

Say good bye to another $200 million of your tax dollars to another country. Congress again looks the other way providing money to everyone else but America.

KABUL/DEH SALAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - One of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's main religious advisers will not overturn a decree issued by clerics in the north reimposing Taliban-style curbs on women, in another sign of returning conservatism as NATO forces leave the country.
Just days after the United States launched a $200 million program to boost the role of women in Afghanistan, a senior member of the country's top religious leaders' panel said he would not intervene over a draconian edict issued by clerics in the Deh Salah region of Baghlan province.
Deh Salah, near Panshir, was a bastion of anti-Taliban sentiment prior to the ousting of the austere Islamist government by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in 2001.
But the eight article decree, issued late in June, bars women from leaving home without a male relative, while shutting cosmetic shops on the pretext they were being used for prostitution - an accusation residents and police reject.
"There is no way these shops could have stayed open. Shops are for business, not adultery," Enayatullah Baligh, a member of the top religious panel, the Ulema Council, and an adviser to the president, told Reuters late on Friday.
Residents of Deh Salah described the order as a "fatwa", or religious edict, although only senior clerics in Kabul should issue such a binding religious order.
But underscoring opposition to the edict, a mayor was shot dead by a teenaged shop owner while trying to enforce the order, which also barred women from clinics without a male escort, threatening unspecified "punishments" if they disobeyed.
Afghanistan has one of the world's highest infant mortality rates and more than a decade after the U.S.-backed toppling of the Taliban, it still ranks as one of the worst nations to be born a girl.
Under Taliban rule from 1996 until 2001, women were forced to wear the head-to-toe covering burqa and sometimes had fingers cut off for wearing nail varnish.
The decree, signed by a conservative cleric in the area named Zmarai, contained a warning of holy war if authorities tried to block it: "If officials do react to our demands, we will start a jihad."
There is growing fear among many people in Afghanistan that the withdrawal of NATO-led forces and efforts to reach a political agreement with the Taliban to end the 12-year-old war could undermine hard-won freedoms for women.
"LIKE THE TALIBAN AGAIN"
In the deeply conservative, male-dominated country where religion often holds more sway than legal authority, religious leaders have often been a major barrier to women obtaining the rights granted to them under the constitution.
In Deh Salah, home to about 80,000 people, most of them ethnic Tajiks rather that the majority Pashtuns, the main community from which the Taliban draw support, a cosmetic shop owner named Abdullah stood before his business - now hidden behind plywood sheeting - and said clerics were increasingly flexing their muscles.
"They want to bring back the Taliban days. If they have their way they will take control in this district and make life impossible," said Abdullah.
"We are poor people and they have closed me down. I want the government to take action or we are going to have mullahs running the place like the Taliban again," he said.
Shah Agha Andarabi, a doctor, said the rumor of prostitution and adultery in Deh Salah was without foundation and was being used as an excuse by conservative clerics to crack down on women.
"There is nothing going on in these shops and I guarantee that. There was no proof. They just wanted to close these shops to women," he said.
Deh Salah police commander Colonel Abdul Ahad Nabizada also rejected the claims underpinning the decree, but said the mayor who was shot while closing the shops had been frightened into action by the threat of jihad against him if he was deemed to be blocking the edict.
"Everyone here is Muslim. We haven't seen any behavior like they claim in this small city. There were women coming to get their needs in the market and conservative people were against it," said Nabizada.
U.S. aid officials this week announced a $200 million assistance package for Afghan women, to be matched by other international donors allied with the NATO-led coalition in the country, due to end combat operations by the end of next year.
Human rights and women's groups have accused Karzai's government of backtracking on pledges to protect women's freedoms, highlighted by parliamentary opposition to a presidential decree outlawing violence against women.
The government also appointed a former Taliban official to the country's new human rights body, while criminal laws under consideration in parliament would prevent women and girls testifying against family members accused of abusing them.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

16 Giant Corporations That Have Basically Stopped Paying Taxes -- While Also Cutting Jobs!

 
 

The brackets are set for the big dance — the dance around tax responsibility. Most of the teams are in the bottom bracket. In this league, the lowest score wins.

Outside the stadium our nation's kids and seniors and low-income mothers may be dealing with  food and housing cuts, but on the corporate playing floor new low-tax records are being set again this year. Just as this is a golden age for sports, this is also, as noted by the  New York Times, "a golden age for corporate profits."
Corporations have simply stopped paying their taxes, perhaps using the 2008 recession as an excuse to plead hardship, but then never restoring their tax obligations when business got better. The facts are indisputable. For over 20 years, from 1987 to 2008, corporations paid an average of 22.5% in federal taxes. Since the recession, this has  dropped to 10% -- even though their profits have doubled in less than ten years.
Pay Up Now just completed a compilation of corporate tax payments over the past five years, using  SEC data as reported by the companies themselves. The firms chosen are top-earners who have filed 10-K reports through 2012. Their US Tax figures represent the five-year total of "current" payments.

The 64 corporate teams paid just over  8% in taxes over the five-year period.
The Slink Sixteen
General Electric: The  worst tax record over five years, with $81 billion in profits and a $3 billion refund.
Boeing: In addition to receiving a refund despite $21.5 billion in profits, the company ranked high in  job cutting, underfunded pensions, and contractor misconduct.
Exxon Mobil: Made by far the largest profits in the group, but paid less than 1% in U.S. taxes, and yet received  oil subsidies along with their tax breaks. Unabashedly reports a 2012  "theoretical tax" of over $27 billion, almost 90% of its total income tax expense. The company was also near the top in  contractor misconduct.
Verizon: Second worst tax record, with a refund despite $48 billion in profits.
Kraft Foods: Received a refund from the public despite $13.5 billion in profits. Also a leading  job-cutter.
Citigroup: One of the five big banks who are estimated to get a  bailout/refund from the American public amounting to three cents from every tax dollar.
Dow Chemical: Received a refund despite almost $10 billion in profits.
IBM: Paid less than 3% in taxes while ranking as one of the leading  job cutters, and near the top in  contractor misconduct.
Chevron: In addition to a meager 4.3% tax rate and a share of oil subsidies, the company has been the main beneficiary of  tax-exempt government bonds.
FedEx: The company paid less than 5% in federal taxes while relying on the  publicly-funded Post Office to deliver thirty percent of its ground packages.
Honeywell: Less than 6% in taxes, a leading  job cutter, near the top in instances of  contractor misconduct, and run by the "Fix the Debt" CEO with the  largest pension fund.
An 8% tax rate, a leader in  job cuts and underfunded pensions, and in the top 20 of  contractor misconduct instances.
Notable for an 8.4% tax rate,  job cuts, offshore holdings, and the top U.S. spot on the  contractor misconduct dollar list.
Apple: Where to begin? Avoiding  federal taxes, avoiding  state taxes, hiding overseas earnings, engaging in  intellectual property schemes, using the  "Double Irish" to transfer profits from Europe to Bermuda, and  underpaying its store workers despite conducting most of its product and research development in the United States.
Pfizer: One of the leaders in stockpiling  untaxed profits overseas, and right behind Merck in  contractor misconduct dollars.
Google: A master at the  "Double Irish" revenue shift to Bermuda tax havens, while using tax loopholes to bring a lot of the money  back to the U.S. without paying taxes on it.  Recognized as one of the  world's biggest tax avoiders.
Microsoft: Named as one of the biggest  offshore hoarders while using tax strategies to bring much of their untaxed money back to the U.S., where it also  avoids state taxes.
But god forbid if one of us forget to pay $1 of our taxes. I.R.S. will take your home and your car to get that $1. Living in any other country is looking pretty good right now.

Source: Corporate Accountability and Work Place  

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Millions being wasted on vacant government buildings


     It just blows my mind the amount of money the government waste on a daily bases. Well not really, it’s easy to spend others people money that you didn’t work for.  The thing that blows my mind is, Congress sits in meetings to find ways to pay for things not related to the American people. They first discuss taking away public services which is the number 1 thing our taxes are and should be used for instead the money went the opposite way.  To have American pay back the debt they created using our money for everything outside this country is just wrong. Then go on TV and try explain the government is broke we have to cut services to the American people. Are they blind to not see all the ways to save the money.  Read newspaper articles, their pork spending, vacations, raises, just to name a few. Now here is another way. Sell all the empty buildings costing tax payers millions of wasted dollars to maintain these buildings.

     Hundreds of millions of your tax payer dollars are being spent to hold onto vacant and unused buildings around the country. There are an estimated 14,000 vacant or nearly vacant buildings owned by the federal government that cost taxpayers some $190 million a year to maintain, according to a White House spokesperson. "Any company that allowed this to happen would be bankrupt," said Congressman John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Exhibit A: A mammoth structure in Georgetown, right in the heart of the nation's capital. The rooftop view looks out over the Potomac River, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, even the Washington Monument. This is some of the most valuable real estate in Washington, D.C., and yet the building has sat mostly unused for more than a decade.

                                            Kennedy Center for Performing Arts

Many dilapidated properties were listed as being in "Excellent" condition; some empty buildings are actually listed as occupied. The empty buildings can be found all over the country, many of them owned by the Veterans Administration. In addition to the pricey Georgetown space, there is another building —- the annex to the Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., just blocks from White House -- that has not been used for more than a decade.

A new report by the Government Accountability Office found that the government does not seem to know very much about its own buildings. But a Congressional committee recently held a hearing inside the vacant, former Georgetown power plant building, pressing the government to get rid of properties it is not using. Problem with this is we all now committees in Washington haven’t done anything along with Congress the past 20 years. 

Sources-- Spinners and Winners, By Jonathan Karl, Richard Coolidge, Gregory Lemos & Sherisse Pham | Power Players – Tue, Jul 3, 2012