Waste Beyond Belief

Do you remember spending almost a million dollars in the last few years on a website devoted to romance novels? How about that $17.5 million you spent on brothels in Nevada? Or the $200,000 treating record industry executives to a world tour?

No? Well, technically you didn’t spend all that money. Your government did. But it was your money the government spent.

Romance novels and record tours are just a few among dozens of outrageous expenditures Senator Tom Coburn has cataloged in his 2013 “Wastebook,” the latest of his annual reports to remind us just how out-of-control the federal government has become.

The entire report is worth reading, if only for the experience of discovering example after example of scandalous use of taxpayer dollars, each more absurd than the last, none of which you’ve ever heard of.

For instance, the State Department recently spent $5 million on custom crystal wine glasses for its embassies. USAID spent $300,000 on 600 gallons of diesel in Afghanistan--$500 per gallon, or a hundred times the going rate.

Amtrak lost $60 million last year alone providing food service on its long distance routes (some of which include complimentary wine and cheese, and offer gourmet meals subsidized by taxpayers).


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Download a .PDF copy of Wastebook