Out of Control

A new website, USASpending.gov, serves as a virtual invoice of the top expenditures of federal tax dollars, thanks in part to efforts by Reason and a coalition of other groups who have been urging the presidential candidates to make good on the promise of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act.

In August, Reason Foundation's Amanda Hydro spearheaded distribution of the "Oath of Presidential Transparency" to every presidential candidate. To date, six presidential candidates, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), have signed the oath declaring that, should they win the presidency in 2008, they will issue an executive order during their first month in office instructing the entire executive branch to put into practice the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, creating a Google-like search tool that allows you to see how your tax dollars are being spent on federal contracts, grants and earmarks.

You can read the oath, view the signatures of those candidates who have signed it, and related coverage here.

Click HERE to read my recent op-ed on the Oath of Presidential Transparency as well as the merits of government transparency and accountability on FOXNews.com.

Courtesy of Human Events - The Top Ten Highest Paid Union Bosses

#1 G. William Hunter, Executive Director, NBA Players Association, $2,185,446
#2 Eugene Upshaw, Executive Director, NFL Players Association, $2,064,526
#3 Donald M. Fehr, Executive Director, MLB Players Association, $1,000,000
#4 Jimmy Warren, Financial Treasurer, Steelworkers and AFL-CIO, $825,262
#5 Gregory J. Hessinger, Chief Executive Office, Screen Actors Guild, $803,399
#6 Alan Eisenberg, Executive Director, Actors and Artists, AFL-CIO Branch, $720,743
#7 Jay Roth, National Executive Director, Directors Guild of America, $686,673
#8 Don Hunsucker, President and CEO, United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1288, $679,949
#9 John McLean, Executive Director, Writers Guild, West Headquarters, $650,402
#10 Gerald McEntee, President, State, County and Municipal Workers, $629,291

Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao penned an oped on union transparency, disclosure, and accountability. Here it is in its entirity.

At the Department of Labor, we’ve made a point of doing more, better and with less. Among the standout performers is the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS). Established in 1959 to protect union members from union corruption, OLMS was hamstrung from the get-go, saddled with inadequate regulatory power and woefully insufficient manpower. It has been nearly 50 years since OLMS was created, but it is only recently that the agency has had the backing it needs to even begin to fulfill its mission of protecting union members from union corruption. Now that effort is threatened as Congress singles out this anti-corruption agency for budget cuts.

After severe cutbacks in the 1990s, OLMS began rebuilding in 2001. Although still significantly below 1980s staffing levels, in the past six years OLMS investigators and auditors have referred cases to U.S. Attorneys resulting in 775 convictions and over $70 million in restitution for union members.

In 2003, the union financial disclosure form (LM-2) was revised for the first time since 1959. For the first time in history, unions were required to make meaningful disclosures of their finances. For instance, America’s teachers – who make, on average, $47,800 annually – now can know that the President of the leading teacher union (National Education Association) makes five times as much they do ($272,000). He certainly has not been left behind. Union members are also discovering the extent to which their dues money is funding lavish trips for union officials to luxury resorts and other expensive perks, political activities and items unrelated to collective bargaining.

Many union officials vociferously opposed this increased disclosure of union finances. Compliance cost estimates were wildly exaggerated to argue against the new requirements. The AFL-CIO claimed that it would cost unions “more than $1 billion” and the AFL-CIO alone would spend $1 million to comply. In fact, filling out the new disclosure form cost the AFL-CIO $54,150.

Unions had $22 billion in assets in 2005 – riches built on the dues deducted from the paychecks of union members. Union members are entitled to know where their money is going. Congress is all for boosting the Securities and Exchange Commission’s budget so it can ride herd on businesses. But OLMS -- the unions’ equivalent of the SEC -- is on the chopping block. Every other Department of Labor enforcement agency – all targeted at businesses – is getting a budget increase. Less than one-tenth of one percent of the department’s budget goes to OLMS, the one federal entity charged with protecting union members from union corruption, and it is the one singled out for budget cuts.

Anyone who is wondering what they may soon be missing should go to www.unionreports.gov.

In case you missed it, OMB Director Rob Portman wrote a Wall Street Journal Letter to the Editor on July 3rd.

He said, "To ensure greater accountability for government spending, the administration launched a project in 2002 to publicly assess every federal program. People can now visit www.expectmore.gov to see detailed information on the performance of federal programs representing 96% of all federal spending. To hold federal managers accountable, www.results.gov displays a scorecard so the public can see how federal agencies and departments measure up on five key management criteria." Portman went on to talk about the earmarks database which can be accessed at www.earmarks.omb.gov and information on all public grants and contracts will be available by January 1, 2008.

Looks like the transparency train is on track to performance based results - let's make sure that it keeps on rolling.

The Transparency Train is rolling. The first beachhead was passage of the 'google government' bill last year by Dr. Coburn and, now, it appears that the sun will soon shine on earmarks. The next great Transparency Frontier will be reauthorization of government programs – or at least it should be.

The “State Children’s Health Insurance Program” (SCHIP) has been in the news recently as those on the Hill look to reauthorize, while some even advocate to expand, the program. Providing government funded health care for the poorest children of America’s neediest families is a worthy social goal but, SCHIP has not been without controversy.

In an April 24th Wall Street Journal article, it was reported that “some states are using the program to expand government-subsidized coverage well beyond kids – to children from wealthier families and even to adults”. Indeed, what was originally intended to help the poorest of the poor, the most needed is now being used to backdoor HillaryCare - inch-by-inch national health care insurance.

Devon Herrick wrote in a recent Washington Times article, “SCHIP was designed to achieve one specific goal: insurance for children. That goal has been lost in the mad scramble to not lose federal money. SCHIP should be scaled back to fulfill its original intent, and we need to explore better options for achieving that intent. Throwing money at a problem has never worked.”

Is there a Doctor in the house? Why, yes there is! Let’s apply a Back on Track Transparency analysis as might be prescribed by the Senate Doctor, Dr. Tom Coburn, to the SCHIP and other government programs:

Rx- SCHIP (and the politicians that fund it) should require the comprehensive review of the SCHIP program, the consolidation of overlapping programs, and the elimination of ineffective aspects before considering continuation or expansion.

Rx- SCHIP should reprioritize it funding and efforts toward providing health care for children in families with the greatest need before adding new or additional taxes on the American taxpayer.

Rx- SCHIP should be subject to rigorous audits and review, and continued funding should be tied to measurable outcomes.

Paging Congress, your prescription is ready!

Today, Sen. Tom Coburn released a scathing report on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and waste of taxpayer dollars. In the 115 page report, example after example of taxpayer funding abuse is identified and sourced Yet another story of our far flung bureaucrats and their many taxpayer financed boondoggles.

According to the Coburn Report "CDC Off Center," CDC spent $45 million over 5 years for agency-sponsored conferences.

"Though professional conferences are essential in many fields, CDC-funded conferences appear to have evolved into an industry unto themselves that year after year meets – often in the warmer climates during colder months – to decry the lack of spending in their particular field. Even conference participants acknowledge that their colleagues travel from conference to conference essentially talking to each other and fighting each other over the pot of federal funding."

That’s exactly what they do and it needs to stop!!!

The report also reminds us of the infamous CDC over-stating of the "obesity epidemic". You remember, don’t you? It was March of 2004 and the CDC released a report claiming obesity caused 400,000 deaths a year. Citing new data sets, the CDC “adjusted” their obesity related deaths to 25,814 in April of 2005 and then, adjusted them again in June 2005, to a standard of “obesity is still bad” no matter the numbers.

Then, we find in the report that the CDC funded a “Bar Night” for a San Francisco AIDS project and a “Manual on How to Throw an Alcohol Party" (pg 104 in the report). This is just too easy! I wonder how our acting anti-alcohol Surgeon General would feel about this?

Do you ever wonder if there are staff meetings at HHS? Agenda Item #1 might be, I suggest, “Right hand tell Left Hand what we are doing.” Maybe Congress should set the table for regaining public confidence in government by instituting the recommendations of the Coburn Report. As this “CDC Off Center” report demonstrates, hundreds of millions of tax dollars are used for questionable purposes with often unknown or immeasurable results.

For Coburn's thoughts on how to get the CDC back on track (pg 112) and the complete study click here.

May 24th - an "expert panel" at the Institute of Medicine released a "blueprint" on further federal regulation and taxation of tobacco products, among other great ideas. This report was immediately seized upon by advocates supporting pending federal legislation on, what else, expanding government reach by providing FDA Regulation of tobacco products and federally funded healthcare (expanding a federal/state children's health care program called, "SCHIPS") via Federal tobacco Excise Tax increases!

According to the Research Accountability Project, a coalition of interests advocating transparency in federal expenditures, 6 members of the 14 "expert" IOM panel received $44,426,451.00 in government research grants specific to tobacco, alcohol, media influences and "children" (and over 200 other grants made to other panel members on non-tobacco topics), according to HHS databases, from 1992 to 2006. This is only the KNOWN amount of taxpayer funded research on a limited publicly available database. Some grants had no dollar amounts, so the actual number could be greater Dr. Tom Coburn's web site legislation, passed last year, will soon fill in the blanks on ALL federal expenditures.

Btw... Dr. Glantz quoted below is, according to RAP a recipient of $9.7 million in known federal tobacco research funding, and is one of John Stossel's perpetrators in his new book, Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity. Get out the Shovel- Why Everything You Know is Wrong, for his alarming early work on Environmental Tobacco Smoke.

All this government "expertise" and taxpayer funding assembled to release a "quasi government" report timed - perfectly- to affect government policy! As MasterCard might add, "Priceless", but it's not.

The "experts" cite declining public attention as a need for the report. What does that mean? I guess since most people might feel that the tobacco industry and downtrodden, declining, demoralized adult smokers have been picked on enough, so this group wants to "rally the troops" for more, bigger government resources dedicated to pick whatever flesh might remain on their bones after the $246 BILLION Master Settlement Agreement. Isn't it really interesting that this study was "funded" by a public advocacy group funded by the state settlement? The tobacco companies - read: smokers - pay for the settlement and the American Legacy Foundation and they, in turn, cherry pick taxpayer supported "experts" to heap further misery on them?

Aren't there better uses for this "expertise" and government expenditures than to continue, as Jacob Sullum recently coined in Reason magazine, the "Politics of Meddling"?

See the whole article on Forbes.com

As Dr. Coburn has reminded us time and time again of the millions of dollars spent on sending government employees to conferences in exotic locations, we see another opportunity to point out this waste of taxpayer dollars...

Today, Hawaii's Lt. Governor James R. "Duke" Aiona and Acting US Surgeon Kenneth Moritsugu held a call to action meeting in Honolulu to cite stats on how widespread underage drinking in Hawaii is. According to the Lt. Governor's spokesperson, "in attendance were members of the research community, health care providers, Department of Health officials, policy makers, law enforcement personnel, educators, business representatives, members of the faith-based community, youth and parents.”

While they lounge in the sun and enjoy Hawaii's surf on my dime, I wonder how much it really costs the taxpayers... instead I would love it if those government employees would explain how it is that a 18 year old can fight and die protecting this country and they are not allowed to have a beer... and why millions of dollars continue to be wasted on prevention programs that have continually proven ineffective at stopping teenagers from drinking before they are of the legal age. Did they ever stop to think that teenagers might not drink underage so excessively if it wasn't a forbidden fruit, if they weren't prohibited like people their age in the rest of the world?