Taxes Essay Research Paper Running head Taxes — страница 3

document waste totaling more that 300 billions and billions of dollars more that can not be quantified due in large part to a lack of commitment to sound and efficient management.” (p.1). Taxes 9 Managing the federal government, (1993) Reported the following: By using the results of investigations by this and other Committees, as well as by auditors including the inspectors General and General accounting office this report attempt to identify those programs in each of the major agencies that are suffering from the worst miss management. It is the hope that this report will stimulate discussion among policy makers and citizens on this important subject. Government waste has not only bilked the taxpayer of hundreds of billions of dollars, but it has created a public cynicism

about government at a time when effective government is needed most. (p.2). The federal government has a department called The Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Its duties are to foster strong leadership throughout government. However over the last ten years the OMB has led the drive to deprive government of the resources needed to manage big government. OMB has cut back on auditing and enforcement budgets, which has led to huge rip-offs in government health care, defense, loan and other programs. In the late 1980s, the Inspector General had filed complaints with the OMB concerning fraudulent behavior in the HUD program. It was not until the scandal made the evening news that the OMB investigated into the $2 billion dollar scandal caused by influence, peddling, and greed.

The following information was uncovered by the Committee of Government Operations (1993):  Ignoring early reports of significant failures the Defense Department spent $4 billion on a defense avionics package for the B-1 bomber that was eventually canceled. Taxes 10  The Department of the Treasury awarded a contract for off the shelf, commercially available equipment and services to a vendor whose price was half a billion dollars higher than the runner up.  The Pentagon awarded a contract for its Reserve Component Automation System to a contractor whose $1.6 billion bid was hundreds of millions of dollars higher than other bidders.  The Federal Aviation Administration was poised to purchase $1 billion in computer services that it did not need, before the Government

Operations Committee intervened.  NASA, which spends more than $14 billion in procurement each year, has such a shortage in procurement resources that it faces excessive subcontractor profits, overpayments for services, low productivity from contractor employees, poor technical oversight, the payment of inordinately high award fees for suspect contract performance, and a host of other problems.  The Pentagon’s failure to monitor problems encountered on the A-12 aircraft contract resulted in a schedule that was so far delayed and a cost that was so inflated that the entire system had to be cancelled at a cost of $2.6 billion dollars. The only thing the public got for its money was six sets of sophisticated drawings.(p. 7) Taxes 11 If the federal government was a bank, it

would have gone under years ago. Billions of dollars are lost ever year from its nearly $1 trillion dollars in loan guarantees. Over 20 percent, or $45 billion dollars, in government loans are delinquent, and another $18 billion was written off in 1991. As of 1991, the US government had a total of $900 billion dollars in guaranteed loans on the books. All this money, so much money, all on the heads of the American taxpayers. Because it’s the American taxpayer in the end who will suffer, it will be the tax -payer that forfeits his or her standard of living to pay for the flagrant overspending of government. It will be the taxpayer who gets ripped off in the end because it’s the taxpayer that’s getting ripped off now. Conclusion The need for taxes is indeed prevalent in a

free society, and not all things that are supported by the taxes are bad. Indeed, many of the programs that are paid for through tax dollars are wonderful programs that may only be found in a country as great as our own, but the other side of the coin seems much larger, larger in respect to the number of people who support programs that are ill managed verses the number of people who get to take advantage of such programs that they pay for. The burden of revenue placed on the taxpayer could be reduced incredibly if government would clean up its bad habits of blatant overspending. Big government will continue to waste until the population of taxpayers speak out against such waste. It is only the ignorance of people that allows the government to continue government programs that