Without cutting national security, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or food stamps and other nutrition programs-almost.
Dollar amounts are in billions.
Some amounts are only very rough estimates due to data collected from the net, a lack of uniform definitions (corporate welfare for example) and budget figures from several years.
Somewhat tongue-in-check:
$0.03 2009 spent to promote racism
Minority Business Development Agency
$0.034 2009 spent telling the president how to use a cell phone
National Telecommunications and Information Administration
$.111 2010 spent telling us how high the cost of energy is
Energy Information Administration
$0.168 2010 spent spreading liberal propaganda
National Endowment for the Humanities
$0.258 2009 wasted on subsidies for state and local governments to promote economic development
Economic Development Administration
$0.335 2011 spent to insure there?s plenty of sex and violence on TV
Federal Communication Commission
$0.155 2009 spent to provide sex and violence for people that don?t watch TV
National Endowment for the Arts
$0.42 2009 spent trying to promote U.S. exports when NAFTA and GATT have ruined our manufacturing economy so we don?t have exports
International Trade Administration
$0.422 2010 spent on Sesame Street
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
$0.82 2009 spent showing us how to use a ruler and measuring cup
National Institute of Standards and Technology
$5.42 2010 spent to operate Congress
The U.S. Congress
$1.1 2010 spent to encourage Americans to do what should come natural to them: be responsible Americans
Corporation for National and Community Service
$2.6 annually spent to subsidize AMTRAK
Separate from the U.S. Department of Transportation
$5.82 2012 estimated cost of letting illegal aliens violate our national sovereignty
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
$17 2008 wasted looking for little green men from Mars- but hey Obama?s going to need all the votes he can get come 2012
NASA
$20 annually spent to raise the cost of living
Farm subsidies for specific crops
$23 2009 wasted on welfare
TANF, successor to AFDC
$26 2009 wasted on foreign aid to countries that will never be our friends
Money sent to nations other than the UK and Israel
$43 2010 spent to create and subsidize urban slums
Department of Housing and Urban Development
$56 2010 to make sure Johnny can?t read
U.S. Department of Education
$79 2011 spent to create traffic jams and unsafe roadways
U.S. Department of Transportation
$92 annually spent on corporate welfare
Subsidies for big business
$126 2009 spent interfering with the labor market
U.S. Department of Labor
$381 2009 spent on interest for the federal debt
Throwing good money after bad
$.079 2008 spent to tell farmers that they are in a risky business
Risk Management Agency
$0.97 2010 spent to tell us the economy is a mess
Economics and Statistics Administration
$8.8 2008 spent telling us how to wash our hands properly
Centers for Disease Control
$8.1 2012 estimated amount spent for federal strip searches
Transportation Safety Administration
$0.373 2010 spent letting the next terrorist cell roam the country at will
United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology
$2.4 2008 spent keeping the Indians dependent on the government
Bureau of Indian Affairs
$0.96 2010 spent helping big business exploit public lands
Bureau of Land Management
$6.87 2010 spent on R&D that private business and industry should be doing while spreading hysteria over things like global warming
National Science Foundation
$0.231 annually spent to manage federal bureaucrats that cannot be fired
United States Office of Personnel Management
$0.569 2009 spent trying to make amends for spending so much on corporate welfare
Small Business Administration
$11.26 2009 spent to put Wendell Wilkie on the 1940 GOP ticket
Tennessee Valley Authority
$0.35 2007 spent to give lawyers to criminal defendants who are likely guilty as hell
Legal Services Corporation
$5.8 2008 spent to make natural disaster victims dependent on taxpayers in perpetuity
Federal Emergency Management Agency
$0.35 annual average cost of telling president how he should do his job
Executive Office of the President
$0.3 2004 spent to facilitate strip-mining
Office of Surface Mining
$0.247 2007 spent to subsidize local public libraries because the DoEd can only spend so much
Institute of Museum and Library Services
$0.076 2010 spent to keep Appalachia dependent on the federal taxpayer
Appalachian Regional Commission
$0.17 2010 spent so farmers can spend their time on the net instead of on the tractor
Community Connect Program
$0.39 2005 spent to study and explain the effects of 50 years of welfare and no-fault divorce, i.e., what happens when too many Americans have no morals
Office of Population Affairs
$0.17 2005 spent to encourage FDIC banks to make risky loans and give away their profits
Bank Enterprises Award Program
$0.49 2005 spent to study and explain how 50 years of welfare and no-fault divorce lead to stray children
Basic Center Grant
$1.69 2005 spent to study and treat junkies- when executing them would be cheaper in the long run
Block grants for prevention and treatment of substance abuse
$4.3 2005 spent to collect child support because the states won?t enforce their own court rulings
Child Suport Enforcement
$5.9 2005 spent to subsidize farmers who don?t realize they are in a risky business
Crop insurance
$0.55 2005 spent to subsidize the state of Alaska
Denali Commission Program
$1.7 2005 spent to subsidize state welfare programs
Social Services Block Grants
$0.07 2008 spent making all the other waste possible
Office of Management and Budget
Some of the numbers may overlap, and it is impossible to pin down numbers for things like foreign aid without having a working definition of foreign aid. Some of the money used to promote international trade may or may not be counted as foreign aid.
The fact that the federal budget is so big that you cannot find accurate and up-to-date data about shows just what a mess we are in.
Bear in mind that I am not saying that we should or that we even could eliminate all of the spending I have outlined here. Some things should be totally eliminated while others need to be drastically revised considering what we actually get in exchange for spending the money. For example I support the idea of a national public school system (national curriculum, teacher qualifications and standardized exams for all subjects in all grades), and this would require federal spending on education. But considering the overall state of our public school systems, any money spent through the federal DoEd is completely wasted.
Other things could be added to the list. If we restricted food stamps to groceries that would provide a nutritionally balanced diet for the recipients when we allow people to buy junk food with them now, we could get more value for the money we spend and we?d save money that is now spent on healthcare to tend to people who have diabetes and heart disease because of their diet.
If we restricted food stamps to groceries that would provide a nutritionally balanced diet for the recipients when we allow people to buy junk food with them now, we could get more value for the money we spend and we’d save money that is now spent on healthcare to tend to people who have diabetes and heart disease because of their diet.
I like that idea. I see what people in line with me buy and seeing me fund two big bags of noodles, pastry, bread and candy going into a morbidly obese person bothers me. The fly in this ointment is that carbo addictions are often coping devices that while useless otherwise do comfort the eater psychologically.
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I'll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.: LBJ's Ghost
I like that idea. I see what people in line with me buy and seeing me fund two big bags of noodles, pastry, bread and candy going into a morbidly obese person bothers me. The fly in this ointment is that carbo addictions are often coping devices that while useless otherwise do comfort the eater psychologically.
The situation is not much better with the child nutrition program, i.e., school lunch program. When I was in school decades ago normal cafeteria faire was hamburgers, hotdogs, pizza, soup, the worst fried fish imaginable and cheese sandwiches. We usually had applesauce or fruit cocktail, but we usually had fried tater tots as well (which I either didn?t eat or sold to a classmate).
I stopped going through the hot lunch line about mid-way through the 8th grade because I got sick and tired of being served food that was usually cold by the time I got it and often moldy. So for the next year and a half my lunch consisted of donuts, microwave pizza and a milkshake, which I could get from a shorter line. Then from grade 10 on I didn't have to be in the cafeteria during my lunch period so I usually didn't eat lunch at all (on top of never eating breakfast). My mother never cared what I ate or even if I ate (she's been overweight since she was 30), and the school system simply compounded the problem.
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