By Chris Basten

  Government and waste are synonymous terms. According to FoxNews, the federal tax code is some 17,000 pages long and requires 700 forms to keep track of everyone’s monetary activities. The American economy may suffer a $194 billion setback just so that people can take time to comply with tax laws. It takes an estimated 5.1 billion hours of our time to fill out all of these obnoxious forms. The Federal Registry reports that all of the federal regulations imposed on businesses are about 75,000 pages long. To implement and abide by all of these strict codes and laws, businesses lose $500 to $600 billion per year. In addition, we have been raped of billions to destroy Iraq.

Does this sound bleak? It should. Further investigation into government waste programs is daunting, to say the least. 2004 is still young and federal spenders have already gone shopping for $227 billion worth of wasteful agendas. Lobbyists are well taken care of while tax payers face an ominous future. The federal deficit could go up to $521 billion by year’s end.

The Heritage Foundation recently ran a review on how absurd and irresponsible our federal forces really are. The accounts are despicable and inexcusable:

• The federal government cannot account for $24.5 billion spent in 2003.
  
  
• The U.S. General Accounting Office refuses to certify the federal government's own accounting books because the bookkeeping is so poor.
  
  
• Of the 26 departments and major agencies, 18 received the lowest possible rating for their financial management, meaning that auditors cannot even express an opinion on their financial statements.
  
  
• The Medicare program pays as much as eight times the cost that other federal agencies pay for the same drugs and medical supplies.
  
  
• The federal government made $20 billion in overpayments in 2001.
  
  
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development's $3.3 billion in overpayments in 2001 accounted for over 10 percent of the department's total budget.
  
  
• Recently, the Department of Agriculture was unable to account for $5 billion in receipts and expenditures;
  
  
• The Internal Revenue Service does not even know how much it collects in payroll taxes.
  
  
• Congressional investigators were able to receive $55,000 in federal student loan funding for a fictional college they created to test the Department of Education.
  
  
• The Army Corps of Engineers has been accused of illegally manipulating data to justify expensive but unnecessary public works projects.
  
  
• A recent audit revealed that employees of the Department of Agriculture (USDA) diverted as much as 3 percent of the USDA budget to personal purchases through their government-issued credit cards.
  
  
• Over one recent 18-month period, Air Force and Navy personnel used government-funded credit cards to charge at least $102,400 for admission to entertainment events, $48,250 for gambling, $69,300 for cruises, and $73,950 for exotic dance clubs and prostitutes.

How you cannot account for $24.5 billion dollars is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t seem to bother many people, though, as long as it doesn’t directly affect them. As long as we allow this kind of irresponsible spending to occur the government has no incentive to stop because it has not earned one cent of what is so wrongfully collected from hard-working citizens. $24.5 billion is an astronomical amount of money and I have the feeling that there are several bloated lobbyists laughing all the way to the bank. "Unaccounted for" is a not a valid reason but it amazingly gets by us without much fuss.

I find it ironic that the very things the police state tries so hard to push out of society are the exact same behaviors that they spend our money on. They try to curb gambling but the Air Force and Navy spend our Federal Reserve notes on it anyway. They push exotic clubs and prostitutes underground and our stationed troops still visit them anyway. Isn’t it fun to work hard and support all of the force and entertainment activities of our troops here and abroad? I can’t think of a better way to ruin the human race. We proselytize against killing, drinking, drug use, and deviant sexual behavior and yet this is what Americans are forced to spend almost all of their confiscated incomes on. And we still can’t figure out why Muslim nations hate our so-called values.

What I found to be most blatant was a Christian Aid statement about the government-supported sheltering of oil revenue. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), a fancy-sounding name for force, has apparently $4 billion worth of takings that cannot be accounted for. This money has "disappeared" into CPA bank accounts and has not been used for the rebuilding of Iraq’s infrastructure. This information, alone, should indict the government but since it is so powerful, its fumblings and bumblings cannot be taken to account. The mafia would be proud.

Information like this tempts me to fold up my tent and give up that anything will ever change. How can anyone possibly overcome this much futility? What the government cannot keep track of it replaces with more useless currency that printing presses never seem to stop spitting out. Nothing can maintain its value if this continues at such a feverish pace. It’s goddamn depressing to read these gathered facts and think about how much worse it could get. In all honesty, what the hell are we supposed to do?!

The answer lies with us. Libertarians do plenty of railing against the government and it has the tendency to fall on deaf ears, though this trend is changing. While we should never stop exposing the deceitful actions of our politicians and lobbyists, complaining about it gets old. I’m obviously no stranger to crying about the government on a daily basis. It is a convenient way to avoid taking personal responsibility for what I can do to change things.

There is no reason to give up. The government is only as strong as its supporters and persuasion is the key. Allowing the government to provide evidence of its limitless futility should be enough to convince others that significant reduction of Washington is necessary. Often this is not reality, though. There are enough individuals who insist a large government is necessary for a civil society to be maintained and continue to vote for well-intentioned men with polished smiles and new suits. This trend will stall if we continue our campaign to educate the public and pay attention to what our government is doing in our own communities. If we maintain that education and freedom of choice is the answer, the "more force and more money" crowd will appear exceedingly dim-witted. To this end, we have already succeeded.