Wasteful expenditures of US government

By Semoon Chang

In April this year, U.S. Congressman Steve Russell from Oklahoma released a booklet called “Waste Watch.” You can sit back and enjoy reading some of these wasteful expenditures that Congressman Russell selected. This could be a good lesson for Korean politicians as well.

International Relief and Development (IRD), a nonprofit contractor, has received over $2 billion in federal money from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to help rebuild Iraq, Afghanistan and other war-torn nations. Between 2007 and 2010, the organization billed the federal government over $1.1 million for “training” and “staff morale” items,

Nearly half of that amount was for three staff conferences at a resort in Pennsylvania. Investigations by the Washington Post uncovered the perks IRD staff received at the resort, which included “free iPods at one retreat, Nikon Coolpix cameras at another; skeet- shooting outings; extreme-driving classes; and complimentary $50 gift certificates to spend on clothing, jewelry, massages ― whatever the employees wanted.”

Conferences of comparable luxury may also be common in Korea. What is unique about this luxury by IRD is that the nonprofit IRD “was supposed to be helping Iraqi and Afghan citizens reconstruct their lives,” during the height of the wars.

For another story, the Humpty Dumpty Institute, a nonprofit humanitarian organization, received more than $200,000 from the U.S. Embassy in Iraq in 2013 to fly five Iraqi filmmakers from Baghdad to Los Angeles for training at the prestigious UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television. After the trip, the participants received a stipend “allowing them to produce a short film of their own.”

One of those films, the seven-minute “Gift of My Father,” won the Crystal Bear for Best Short Film award at the International Berlin Film Festival in 2015. What a wonderful way to spend $200,000! It really did not turn out that nicely, at least, from the U.S. perspective. The movie depicted the 2007 shooting of 17 Iraqis by employees of the U.S. private security company Blackwater. Although four Blackwater employees were convicted for murder and manslaughter later in 2014, I am not sure whether the U.S. wanted to spend its money to encourage making anti-U.S. films.

The Department of Defense (DOD) spends approximately $15 million a year to store over 500,000 items that no one in the military wants or needs. The storage place is large enough to store 1,300 FEU (forty-foot equivalent unit) containers. The most common containers you see on the road are TEUs or 20-foot containers. The DOD Inspector General discovered a set of gears intended for use on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise ― no longer in service ― and a “component of a power mast worth only $391, stored at a cost of $1,176 annually.”

Separately in October 2014, U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, also from Oklahoma, released his “2014 Wastebook,” listing 100 cases in which the federal government wasted tax dollars. The 2014 edition was the fifth and final version of the book by Senator Coburn who was battling a health problem. Let me introduce a couple of examples, while hoping for a healthy recovery of Senator Coburn.

Republican lawmakers from Mississippi successfully pushed through an earmark requiring the National Aeronautic and Space Administration to complete work on a 300-foot tower that the agency has no use for. The structure, located at a space center in Mississippi, is designed to test rocket engines. The problem is that NASA has no plan to develop any new rockets that could be tested in the “Tower of Pork” or “Tower to Nowhere,” as the structure is known. The Tower cost more than $350 million.

The “low-traffic local airport” near Sun Valley, Idaho, for the “Sun Valley ski resort that is a magnet for the rich and famous” was getting a multi-million dollar facelift courtesy of taxpayers. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) awarded $18 million as part of a series of federal grants to cover the majority of the $34 million construction project for the airport. The federal requirements that supposedly warrant the project include a waiting lounge for arriving passengers that “will have comfortable chairs and a fireplace.”

“Some of the celebrities that frequent or have second homes in Sun Valley include Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Ashton Kutchner and Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Coburn stated. Many blame welfare expenditures for the poor to be wasteful expenditures. The reality is that welfare expenditures for the rich are just as much, if not more, wasteful.

Note that all these wasteful expenditures are made with borrowed money. The cumulative debt of the U.S. government exceeds $18 trillion with 12 zero’s, with annual interest payment alone on the debt hovering around $450 billion with 9 zero’s. Wasting money is bad enough. Wasting money that is borrowed is worse. Wasting borrowed money, knowing that all the problems caused by the borrowing will unfold long after these politicians are gone, is just irresponsible.

Semoon Chang is the director of the Gulf Coast Center for Impact Studies.