Happy Festivus! Is 2018 over already? It was just yesterday the national debt was pushing $20 trillion, and now it
’
s blown $21 trillion away! What a year! While superhero movies kept dominating the box office, with hits like
Black Panther
and
Infinity War
, there were many changes.
Rosanne
came back... for a little bit. The Spice Girls reunited. And the Cleveland Browns even won a football game!
The Waste Report
changed, too. In years past, we published cases of wasteful spending one by one, compiling each at Festivus. Now we
’re
saying “thank u, next”
to that format and adopting a more traditional style to better expose the magnitude of government foibles and continue documenting the inventive ways the federal government wastes hard-
working Americans’ tax
dollars.
Don’t fret
-
The Waste Report
is
n’t
going fully annual. It will now instead be seasonal and bundled
all together in an “Airing of Grievances” at Festivus.
So here we are, another year past, another year to forget. A government shutdown resolved by hiking spending; nuked budget caps; a debt over $21 trillion; and Congress okayed $1.3 trillion in new spending
–
all in the first three months! An October 2018 report from the Congressional Budget Office showed net interest payments on the debt for fiscal year 2018 at $371 billion, $62 billion more than payments for fiscal year 2017. Given such largesse, it may seem like a few million dollars is a drop in the bucket. But to borrow from a line credited to former Senator Everett Dirksen (R-IL):
a million dollars here and there
, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money
. This year,
The Waste Report
is highlighting $114,514,631 of wasted money. We feature an old favorite due for an update and some instant classics, like a study of daydreaming. Exactly where taxes should go, right? No matter how much federal agencies waste, politicians
think they’ve never
got enough. But if
there’s
money to waste,
there’s
too much already. So, before the Feats of Strength can begin, there must be an Airing of (spending) Grievances.
We got a lotta problems with federal spending, a
nd now you’re gonna
hear about it!