Waste in America... Our Trillions of Tax Dollars Hard at Work, or Hardly Working

First off no one, literally no one really knows the full scope of the amount of money our Federal Government wastes each year.  

Despite what the Government would have us otherwise believe, there is no good, comprehensive mechanism having both reliability and integrity to account for all of the waste in government. It is a system lacking effective feedback and any incentive for our politicians to reform when they too often profit from it. There are of course the categories of waste related to outright theft, fraud, and corruption. Easy targets when known and disclosed. There are those related to error. Then there are those in which the distinctions are blurred as to the interpretation of what constitutes waste since "one man's trash is another's treasure". Then there are "Earmarks".

To most people a $500,000 grant to study cattle farting would seem to be an obvious and obscene waste of money; yet the same grant used to study dairy herd metabolic greenhouse gas production of methane might really be worthwhile scientific research for the nation. It often comes down to the agenda and characterization made by the parties of interest, commentators and, or critics.

What our Federal Government so often fails to do however, is what the private sector does with rigor: assess the efficiency of the utilization of the money spent and evaluate the benefits derived in return.

If the Federal Government did the same comprehensively, then there'd be a helluva lot less debate over the "interpretation" of what was wasted or not. It would also make the process of spending a lot more vulnerable to both scrutiny and revelation. In turn the process of establishing priorities effectively when resources are limited would become more responsive than it is today.

But then, few politicians would warm up to those "reforms" since they could no longer benefit from the political cover and opportunities the current quagmire provides them. They have no incentive for accountability reforms when they can gain so much more presently for themselves and their financial backers with virtually no political risk to either.

For 2008 multiple efforts to identify Federal expenditures that could be categorized as waste amounted to more than $844 billion. This figure does not include TARP or any other funding for the bailout of financial firms, the GSE's, AIG, or the Automotive Industry. There's plenty of room for a lot of desperately needed reform and gains in efficiency in this Country without resorting to higher levels of taxation.

On the whole Americans intuitively believe their Federal Government is wasteful; more so than either State or Local Government.

Since 1979 Gallup has been polling Americans each year on that very question, "How much money does government waste?". For 2010 the answer was at least 51%. Imagine that, Americans believe that their Federal Government pisses away 51 cents of every tax dollar they collect.

Why then does such a grossly inefficient system persist? Why do American voters continue to allow politicians to betray the public interest? Could it be the public as a whole benefits disproportionately as well? There maybe some truth there since a majority of Americans do not pay any or little Federal Taxes whatsoever but do receive significant financial benefits in return from Federal spending whether it's wasteful or not. The more the Federal Government spends the more benefit derived.

There are signs however that the electorate is beginning to understand the linkages between revenue, spending and debt and the long term consequences of too much red ink. The question though is whether or not in significant numbers of voters and how soon as to make any real difference in future outcomes.

There may also be another cultural reason why the system remains intact. It may in part have to do with the habits of Americans themselves and their own wasteful spending patterns. For the same year 2008, researchers using government records and data demonstrated that Americans in general wasted $2275 annually in food for each family of four people. In total for the year 2008 even during challenging economic conditions the amount of money wasted
from food thrown in the garbage cans in American households came to $165 BILLION and that ain't small potatoes!