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