What in your opinion/s are the worst current tax expenditures by the federal or state government (other than the Iraq War or anything related to it). Please do not post about the Iraq War. I want to know about anything but that, this is for a class assignment.

You can post anything from research grants to a senator getting better curtains for his home with tax money. Try your best to list official spending, like on grants (research, entertainment, scientific, scholarships etc...) Those just some ideas off the top of my head right now being ignorant on the subject. Yet again please do not post about the Iraq War!

Andrew Kingsbury
10/28/07
English 098
Tripp 8AM

Homelessness only started becoming recognized as a national issue in the 1970’s and 80’s. More and more Americans began to lose their jobs at such a rate that people without homes would be seen on the way to work or even when you would be dropping your children off at school. A New York Times/CBS News Poll that “71 percent (of Americans) in September 1989” were willing to pay higher taxes to help take care of the matter at hand. Not even a year later a poll by the same group was taken on the same issue and they “found that only 58 percent would be willing to pay higher taxes to help the homeless”. The reason for this drastic change was that Americans claimed they had finally become accustomed with seeing homelessness on a daily basis. With the citizens of America having given up hope on the issue there were and are only two other places homeless can get help, non-profit non-governmental organizations or the federal government who taxes a nation whose wealth is well into the trillions according to the CIA’s World Factbook, an online publication. Of the two options the homeless have, the federal government not only has more money but, also has more power to make changes. Having acknowledged these facts, why is homelessness still a continuing problem in America? Homelessness is an issue because of what taxes are being primarily spent on. The federal government needs to reallocate funding from irrelevant recipients to either; non-governmental agencies that have missions to care for those in cases of extreme poverty or create in-house government agencies to handle the matter. There are many grant recipients that are receiving large sums of taxpayers’ money for issues that are nowhere near as important or the government is just misspending hard earned funds.

Just take a look at all the pork-barrel spending that goes on year in and year out. Living in Alaska, I have come to notice that Rep Don Young in the House and Senator Ted Stevens, bring more money home to Alaska than any others in Congress. All politics are local. That is why they continually get themselves re-elected.

Just take a look at Senator Byrd from West Virginia, how many highways, bridges, museums and libraries does he have named after him in the state?

I am not sure what your assignment requires and if these issues are the type you need to address? However, expenditures within departments are always interesting to look. For instance, look at the Department of Education. For every $1 that goes to the department, only $0.38 makes it into the classroom. The rest is spent within the bureaucracy itself to pay for salaries, studies, buildings, and numerous other expenditures. The same can be said with almost any department.

A non-profit organization is viewed successful if more of its monies goes to what their mission is designed to combat, i.e. homelessness, than to pay salaries and routine administrative expenditures. Perhaps a look at a governmental department and its expenditures and where the monies actually go will help you to find some of the bad governmental spending you need to seek.

DMK