Have you ever looked at your paycheck and wondered where your hard-earned tax dollars go? Apparently, the government spends it on lobster. A lot of f*cking lobster. And iPhones. And booze. And trombones. And exercise equipment. An eye-opening report is out that shows the scary and wasteful government spending habits and it will enrage you.
Open The Books is a nonprofit oversight organization that attempts to bring transparency to all government spending, whether it be on the federal, state or local level. The watchdog group’s mission is that they “won’t stop until we capture every dime taxed and spent by our government.”
The OpenTheBooks oversight report titled “The Federal Government’s Use-it-or-Lose-it Spending Spree” shows that government has a certain budget and they are happy to go over their budgets, but will try to never go under their budgets for a significant reason. For decades, the government employs a “use-it-or-lose-it” strategy.
If in the last month of the fiscal year, the government is under budget and appears to have a surplus of money not spent to end the fiscal year, the government will go on a spending spree. The reason is that if the government goes under their budget, then the next year their budget will be lowered because apparently, they don’t need that much money.
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In the Open The Books report, this sickening wasteful spending was highlighted. In the last fiscal month of 2018, the U.S. federal government recklessly spent $97 billion, of which $61 billion was attributed to the Pentagon. According to OpenTheBooks, 2018’s September spending was up 16 percent from 2017 and an increase of 39 percent from 2015.
Government agencies and departments had especially deep, deep pockets in the final week of the 2018 fiscal year, recklessly spending a whopping $53 billion worth in contracts, which is approximately 10 percent of the spending for the entire year.
The government is spending the money on wasteful and lavish items. The Department of Defense spent $4.6 million on crab and lobster in September 2018. The Executive Office of the President spent $26.8 million on items including furniture. Federal employees spent $7.7 million on iPhones and iPads. The Pentagon bought a $9,341 Wexford leather club chair. Is the Pentagon starting a chair force?
The report found that $308,994 was spent on booze, $673,471 on golf carts, $1.7 million on musical equipment including pianos, tubas, and trombones, and $9.8 million on workout and recreation equipment. Our politicians aren’t that fit, that spending on workout equipment is definitely being wasted. The wild spending in the final month of the fiscal month has been called “Christmas in September.”
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The military shelled out $86.5 million for transportation contracts, including $53.5 million for passenger vehicles from Navistar Defense, the maker of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles according to the Military Times. The Pentagon dropped $8.1 billion on contracts with Lockheed Martin and $5.1 billion with Boeing in September.
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Other big spenders were Health and Human Services at $5.7 billion, the Department of Veterans Affairs at $5.4 billion, the Department of Homeland Security at $4.2 billion, and the Department of State spent $4.0 billion in September of 2018.
In a not shocking at all development, the area responsible for the most spending is the Washington D.C. area (including Maryland and Virginia) with an astonishing $25.2 billion in contracts. D.C. was followed up by Texas at $8.9 billion and $7.1 billion in California.
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Senator Rand Paul criticized “use-it-or-lose-it” spending and that “this kind of waste has to stop. It’s an insult to taxpayers.”
This kind of waste has to stop. It’s an insult to taxpayers. https://t.co/o0Z9uAzaqp
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 12, 2019
“More than half of [the spending] was in the last week,” said Adam Andrzejewski, the CEO and founder of OpenTheBooks.com. “Incredibly, one out of every ten contracts procured during the entire year was spent in the last week.”