As you can imagine, there’s a lot to choose from in the contest for the most spectacular waste of tax dollars. But the politicians in Oregon must really want the prize, because they managed to flush several hundred million dollars down a rat hole by putting together a state-run Obamacare website that has to be abandoned […]

Last year, I conducted an informal poll at a conference in Paris. I explained to the audience that the public sector consumed about 57 percent of the French economy and I asked them whether they got more services and better government than the people of Germany (where government consumed 44 pct of GDP), Canada (41 pct), or Switzerland (34 […]

Every so often, I share stories about the ridiculous and outrageous way in which the federal government squanders our money. So when I saw this New York Post story about the feds pissing away a six-figure sum on condom research, I figured this would be a perfect addition to my collection of government waste stories. The federal government is […]

When you work in Washington (and assuming you haven’t been corrupted), you run the risk of being endlessly outraged about all the waste. But not all waste is created equal. Some examples are so absurd that they deserve special attention. Forcing taxpayers to pay millions of dollars for pro-Obamacare and pro-IRS propaganda. Doing interviews – at a per-person […]

One of my first blog posts, way back in 2009, was about bureaucrats from the Social Security Administration squandering more than $700,000 on a boondoggle conference at a fancy Arizona resort. To pick a more recent example, taxpayers have plenty of reasons to be upset about IRS bureaucrats partying at their fancy conferences (including line […]

I don’t write or speak about education very much, but, when asked, I explain that America has a very costly and inefficient government school monopoly. The strongest piece of evidence is an amazing chart put together by a Cato colleague. It shows that education spending has skyrocketed while educational performance has stagnated. One of my […]

Remember the Spending Quiz from 2010, which asked people to guess whether absurd examples of government waste were true or false? Well, we have a new video on government waste, though bureaucrats and politicians have become so profligate it doesn’t even bother to trick people with fake examples. While very well done, I do have […]

A reader sent an email to ask “Which federal department should be abolished first?” I guess this is what is meant when people talk about a target-rich environment. We have an abundance of candidates, including the Department of Education, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Commerce, Department of Transportation, etc. But if I […]

Pending sequestration cuts are hanging in the air over DC, with politicians squirming under the prospect of actually putting a limit of any kind on spending. There’s a particular debate raging over the propriety of the spending cuts set to hit defense and what they’ll means for military readiness, with some Republicans – typically the […]