By: James Daniels

April 18^th, 2011 is the tax deadline in the United States this year. With all the economic trouble that this country has faced in recent times, millions of Americans have lost their jobs and many have been forced to cut back on their expenditures. You would expect the US Government to do the same. Unfortunately, they continue to be extremely wasteful as is illustrated in Senator Tom Coburn‘s report on government waste in 2010.

One example of the US Government’s continued waste is carried out by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). It spends $175 million annually to maintain hundreds of buildings that it does not use. Complex laws issued by the Government make it difficult to sell those buildings; so, they keep them and maintain them at the expense of taxpayers, instead of selling them off.

Another case of misspent money occurred when the University of California at Santa Cruz was given $615,000 to digitize memorabilia of the rock band Grateful Dead. The idea of using a public institution that would allow people to view the memorabilia for free was important to the band. This $615,000 of federal tax money that was spent in the band’s honor is paltry in comparison to the net worth of the band’s two most famous members, who are worth a combined estimated $75 million.

Other notable wastes of tax money in 2010 include a $47.6 million stimulus grant to help build a streetcar project in downtown Atlanta, GA, which happens to run directly over an existing subway line. In addition, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) spent $442,340 of taxpayer money on studying male prostitutes in Vietnam. They also secured a $800,000 grant to study the effects of a genital-washing program in South Africa.

How about other wasted money? According to a report, unnecessary printing in the federal government cost tax payers $930 million in 2010. Ironically, the US Department of Energy (DOE), which is in charge of overseeing energy efficiency in the US, wasted an estimated $2.2 million by not turning off their lights and using inefficient technology. The Government Printing Office (GPO) spent $60,000 on a video game space mouse to teach children the history of printing. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) spent over $20,000 to identify a 2,500 year old mummy. The US Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) loses an estimated $60 billion annually in taxpayer money to waste, fraud, and abuse. In 2010, it paid out $35 million to a crime ring that stole the identities of dozens of doctors and thousands of patients to file phony claims.

While the mentioned acts of waste are only the tip of the iceberg, this seems to be the story year in and year out. Unnecessary handouts, corruption, and inefficiency have continually plagued the US government as it grows larger and larger. The national debt is now at nearly $14.3 trillion and has increased by almost $400 billion in the past three months. To give you an idea of how massive an amount that is, it would take 440,000 years to pay that off at $1 per second or 3,800 years at $10 million per day. This is all money that will have to be paid by future taxpayers and wasting money on digitizing rock memorabilia and the like only makes the problem worse. It is insulting to those of us who find ways to cut back in our own lives and have to compete for a living when the debt piles up by the second and government officials spend money like drunken children. Whether one agrees with the taking of personal income taxes is his or her own choice. I believe that one thing we can all agree on is that the US Government must make better usage of the money that is currently takes, rather than wasting money many already believe it shouldn’t have to begin with.