So Oregon's Government's Out of Money Huh? 

 State Senator Chris Telfer, the only CPA currently serving in the state legislature, found a few hundred million just sitting around in state agency bank accounts that could be used to offset more budget cuts from expected declining revenues. Yet, I guarantee you that the argument will be advanced that we cant use this money and we must raise taxes on the rich and businesses to fill the gap. Oh, wait! We already tried that and it isn't working either. Darn! 

Small government anyone? 


Read Sen Telfer's guest column in the Oregonian here

Can You Really Eliminate a Wasteful Government Program? Yep!

That's right and Citizens Against Government Waste has the story here on what was really eliminated and reduced in the latest "minibus" appropriations bill passed recently in Congress. While Reagan often joked about the "eternal life" of government programs, amazingly Republicans in Congress managed to actually eliminate duplicative, wasteful Federal government agencies! They even managed to reduce funding for outrageous wastes of our tax dollars, such as Harry Reid's "Cowboy Poetry Festival". 

While this is a good start, Congress has a long way to go if they are going to solve our overspending problem. They might consider eliminating a few other wasteful government agencies such as Department of Education, Department of Labor and the Department of Energy. Now that would be saving some serious taxpayer coin!

Still Throwin Your Hard Earned Tax Money Away!


Still don't think we can cut Federal spending?


Sen. Tom Coburn's list of 100 wasteful Federal Government spending projects. 35 Million to the Democrat and Republican parties to pay for their nominating conventions? 30 Million for a Pakistani Mango Farmers program that failed? Must read here

Interesting article in Investor's Business Daily

Dont believe the lie!


It simply isn't true that

                           You Gotta Be Kidding!

Is it really necessary for Medicare to spend 240 million of your taxpayer dollars over the last 10 years to provide elderly men with "penis pumps"? Read this unbelievable opportunity to cut government spending here:

                                                                               

                                      Congress's Lump of Coal

In the spirit of the Christmas season, Congress gives we American taxpayers a gift, or rather a lump of coal. Just when the Obama Administration began to move back to more privatization of the home mortgage industry, Congress passes an amendment that sets up the next big, taxpayer funded bailout from a failing government program. 


Leslie Paige of Citizens Against Government Waste describes this insanity here in a piece titled "On Fannie, Freddie and the FHA, a step back".  As if the eventual taxpayer losses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac estimated to be near 320 Billion weren't bad enough, now we find out that Congress just allowed the FHA to insure even bigger mortgages issued by Fannie and Freddie. This action increases the size of the expected taxpayer funded bailout of FHA, which a GAO audit thought was a 50/50 chance even with their unrealistic and rosy assumptions (FHA insures over 1 Trillion in mortgages).


Raising the limit on the size of a mortgage was the wrong thing for Congress to do if it wanted to move towards more privatization of mortgages and lessen taxpayer exposure to bad loans.

Merry Christmas from Congress!