David Maris wrote, “one of the key problems with government funding of certain studies [is that] the investment is with taxpayer dollars and the benefit might be only to a few.” About the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0963789937/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0963789937&linkCode=as2&tag=tra0c7-20&linkId=dd02f2f8ea24dee7b22d2aa422a39e9a
Describing his opposition of some government funding for scientific research on studies he views as frivolous, he writes, “Scientists often rally quickly to attack anyone who thinks of reducing public funding of science — they do this under the idea that if you don’t want to fund finding answers, you must be a luddite — you must be against science and progress. I am not. I simply think that there are so many very good ideas to study, but limited money and other higher priorities.”
David Boaz of the libertarian Cato Institute opposes governmental decision-making because the obligation to pay taxes is distinct from the decision as to their expenditure on specific budget items. He writes, “We’re not asked ‘will you pay $100 right now for farm subsidies and $4000 for Medicaid and $1600 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and $130 for a new presidential helicopter and … ?’ If we did get such a question, we might well decide that lots of government programs were not well worth the money to the people who would be paying the money.”
Proposed solutions
Conservatives and libertarians have proposed various reforms to the process of government spending: One of these is simply to limit the amount of money that the government spends.[3] A second reform would be to increase government oversight.[3] A third proposal is to implement tax choice. This latter approach was satirized in a 1990 column by New York Times writer Russell Baker: “I have no doubt that the public, with its strongly satirical view of Federal spending, would send in so many tax returns marked Use for $600 toilet seats only that the Pentagon would soon have to distribute overpriced toilet seats free to the homeless, as the Agriculture Department once had to give away cheese to make storage space available for more excess cheese being bought with the taxpayer’s famous dollar.”
Examples:
Massages for rabbits
Meditation for hot flashes
Tax breaks for NFL teams
Some purported examples of government waste are merely urban legends, such as the “million dollar” Space Pen purchased by NASA for $6 each.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_waste
The earliest examples of pork barrel politics in the United States was the Bonus Bill of 1817, which was introduced by Democrat John C. Calhoun to construct highways linking the Eastern and Southern United States to its Western frontier using the earnings bonus from the Second Bank of the United States. Calhoun argued for it using general welfare and post roads clauses of the United States Constitution. Although he approved of the economic development goal, President James Madison vetoed the bill as unconstitutional. A more recent example: to pass the recent “Fiscal Cliff” 12/12 a tax write off went to Hollywood — a $20 million break anytime a TV show or movie is shot in an economically depressed area of the United States.
One of the most famous alleged pork-barrel projects was the Big Dig in Boston, Massachusetts. The Big Dig was a project to relocate an existing 3.5-mile (5.6 km) section of the interstate highway system underground. It ended up costing US$14.6 billion, or over US$4 billion per mile.[9] Tip O’Neill (D-Mass), after whom one of the Big Dig tunnels was named, pushed to have the Big Dig funded by the federal government while he was the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. [10]
During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, the Gravina Island Bridge (also known as the “Bridge to Nowhere”) in Alaska was cited as an example of pork barrel spending. The bridge, pushed for by Republican Senator Ted Stevens, was projected to cost $398 million and would connect the island’s 50 residents and the Ketchikan International Airport to Revillagigedo Island and Ketchikan.[11]
Pork-barrel projects, which differ from earmarks, are added to the federal budget by members of the appropriation committees of United States Congress. This allows delivery of federal funds to the local district or state of the appropriation committee member, often accommodating major campaign contributors. To a certain extent, a member of Congress is judged by their ability to deliver funds to their constituents. The Chairman and the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations are in a position to deliver significant benefits to their states.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel
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