Ending the Legacy of Debt to Our Children by Controlling Spending

By Richard Earnest

Today, the United States is a "Debtor Nation," running up $3 billion in debt every business day, mostly to foreign countries. It's no legacy to pass on to our children, and we must gain control of it.

Eliminating the pork-barrel process known as `Earmarks' would have saved the taxpayers $27 billion last year alone. None of these wasteful projects could have withstood Congressional or Executive Branch scrutiny.

Rewriting Medicare Part D to help only the poorest of our seniors will save at least $500 billion over the next ten years, according to estimates by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget.

According to an audit released in February, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, wasted untold billions of the $36 billion Congress set aside for hurricane relief, including upwards of $40 million on 10,777 mobile homes now sitting empty in Hope, Arkansas; at least $6.1 million in disaster-assistance money to people who were ineligible to receive it. Scores of other abuses were cited in the Report.

In Iraq, meanwhile, an official government audit of the Provisional Coalition Authority found millions of dollars in waste, with the Pentagon paying $20 apiece for ice-cube trays that could be bought for less than $1 at any shopping plaza; $81 for coffee-makers that cost $29; and exaggerated prices for 102 different types of food-service equipment. One U.S. official kept $678,000 in cash in an unlocked footlocker, while another stored $2 million in a bathroom safe. At least $1 billion has been wasted in Iraq because of errant spending, according to U.S. Comptroller David Walker. This is war-profiteering and wide scale theft of taxpayer assets, and it ought to be criminally prosecuted - but I fear we're just hitting the tip of the iceberg.

I believe we should also consider "across-the-board" reductions in non-defense discretionary spending accounts, and I support restoration of the old `Grace Commission' to identify particular areas of unnecessary and wasteful spending.