Wasting your money

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This year, Washington will spend an eye-popping $22,039 per household. That is the inflation-adjusted highest since World War II, and $5,000 per household more than spent just four years ago. With difficult decisions ahead, government waste should be the easiest place to start controlling spending.

Amazingly, Congress hasn't looked seriously at government waste since the 1984 Grace Commission. Lack of information isn't the problem: Hundreds of recent government program audits collect dust on bookshelves across Capitol Hill.

Instead, cutting waste would distract lawmakers from shipping pork-barrel projects home and shoveling money to favored interests. So it isn't surprising the federal government costs 33 percent more than in 2001.

While lawmakers focus on expanding government, the Heritage Foundation uncovered the following ways in which Washington wastes tax dollars:

First, the federal government cannot account for $25 billion it spent in 2003. That's billion with a "b." Federal auditors know someone spent $25 billion, somewhere on something, but don't know who, where or on what. That is more than total federal taxes paid by all residents in each of 28 states. It's enough for the entire Justice Department budget.

Another audit shows the Defense Department purchased and then left unused approximately 270,000 commercial airline tickets at a total cost of $100 million. Even worse, the Pentagon never bothered to file to get the money back on these fully refundable tickets.

And that's not counting the 27,000 times the Pentagon paid twice for the same airline ticket, at a total cost of $8 million. This wasted $108 million could have paid for seven Blackhawk helicopters, 17 M-1 Abrams tanks, or a large supply of additional body armor for U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Credit-card fraud is another problem. Federal employee credit-card programs were designed to streamline government procurement rules by allowing government employees to buy job-related products with agency-paid credit cards.

But this well-intentioned idea was quickly abused. In a recent 18-month period, Air Force and Navy personnel used government-funded credit cards to charge at least $102,400 on entertainment events, $48,250 on gambling, $69,300 on cruises and $73,950 on exotic dance clubs and prostitutes.

Not to be outdone, investigators randomly sampled 300 Department of Agriculture (USDA) employee credit cards. They found, over six months, 15 percent charged a total $5.8 million in personal expenses that included Ozzy Osbourne concert tickets, tattoos, lingerie, bartender school tuition, car payments and cash advances.