Waste in Government Spending Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Waste in Government Spending - Research Paper Example This paper shall specifically address the thesis: the United States government has a significant amount of unnecessary expenses which waste the taxpayers’ money. It shall discuss the fact that the US is spending unnecessarily for matters and items which can actually be discarded as government expenses. This paper is being carried out in order to establish an argumentative and logical conclusion to the thesis, setting forth a scholarly and detailed approach to the resolution of the issue raised. The US government has a significant amount of unnecessary expenses which waste the taxpayers’ money. President Barack Obama himself has acknowledged the fact that â€Å"0.004 of 1 percent of the federal budget as wasteful and proposed eliminating this $140 million from his $3.6 trillion fiscal year 2010 budget request† (Riedl, p. 1). Such waste in government spending is significantly impacting on the areas where actual and essential spending is needed and where deficiencie s are impacting on the quality of government services. There are different kinds of waste seen in government spending, and many of them were specified and detailed by Senator Tom Coburn in his 2010 report entitled â€Å"Wastebook.† Some of these unnecessary expenses shall be discussed below. ... This is an unfortunate circumstance considering the fact that thousands of American troops injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are set to return to the US requiring medical and other support services (Winter). There are about 5,000 buildings owned by the Department of Veterans Affairs, but about 300 of these are vacant and dilapidated. And yet, much money is being allocated for their upkeep and no lucrative or beneficial remedies are being implemented as yet by the government to address this issue. Coburn also discusses how the government is wasting about $1.5 million in sprucing apartments before tearing them down. This practice is seen in Shreveport, LA (p. 4). Coburn (p. 4) reports how the city of Shreveport, Louisiana spent $1.5 million of stimulus funds to fix moldy houses which were already considered for demolition. The housing authority set forth that it would use stimulus money in order to improve various low-income homes. After an audit, the authorities established tha t the city has not spent the money allocated to it; this was against the regulations set forth by the stimulus which required the city to spend the allocated money within a year. In order to comply with such mandate, the officials implemented mold remediation for the housing units (Coburn, p. 4). An evaluation established however that the remediation was not done properly; subsequently, the demolition of the buildings was implemented. Waste in government spending is also apparent with various agencies making unnecessary printing. Such unnecessary printing amounts to $930 million annual cost (Coburn, p. 5). Based on a report by Lexmark (p. 3), there are about $440 million printing savings