Spending American Style

Yesterday I heard Rush Limbaugh talking about a website, dirtyspendingsecrets.com, so today I went there.  It is shocking to see the waste of money that is being spent by our government on things that are not necessary or should be the responsibility of someone other than good ole Uncle Sam.

For example, our government spent:

     $146 million on air flight upgrades for federal employees

     $3 billion to add sand to beaches

     $500,000 to Alaska Airlines to paint a salmon on one of its planes and

     $2,600,000 to train Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job.

Wow, what a great country. Our employees are treated like execs and our prostitutes are trained to  drink less while on the job!  Are they not one in the same?

If this site can highlight these abuses, how many others are there, I am sure so many that it would make your head spin.  I have heard that the job training programs have NEVER been audited. Senator Tom A Coburn M.D.of Oklahoma writes in his 2011 report  entitled "Help Wanted: How Federal Job Training Programs are Failing Workers: 

 "A newly released Government Accountability Office (GAO) report exposes a broken web of

federal job training and employment programs. Nine federal agencies spent approximately $18

billion annually to administer 47 separate employment and job training programs. Many of the

programs are duplicative, but GAO‘s most shocking revelation is that ―little is known about the

effectiveness of most programs."

Training is just one little corner in the government spending apparatus.  If this tiny area is not working and costing us billions, to say that we cannot cut spending is disingenuous  and totally irresponsible. It is time that Congress is held responsible.

I suggest that we all sign the letter on the site and write our "representatives" to get rid of these special deals and get back to governing in the best interests of the country and not special interests. Do you agree?