Government spending and waste, and future budgets

This week has seen numerous articles highlighting problems with wasteful and excessive government expenditure.

• Total spending on 83 welfare programs topped $1 trillion in FY2011, making it the federal government's single largest budget item.  This excludes Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs.  Why (and whether) the government should be spending so much on welfare programs was not addressed.
  
• Senator Tom Coburn released his annual report on government waste this week, highlighting "the 100 most egregious wastes of taxpayer money" in 2012.
• The Heritage Foundation released its 2012 edition of the report 'Federal Spending By The Numbers'.  It highlights the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar-plus deficits, with federal expenditure encompassing almost 23% of the entire US economy.

The cumulative impact of this extraordinarily excessive spending, waste of taxpayer resources, and pork-barrel politics is sickening.  In a recent video report, Prof. Antony Davies called for a 're-design of government', arguing that only if we determine what government's role should be can we assess where and how our tax dollars should be spent.

I think Prof. Davies has it right.  One way or another, we've got to rein in the tax-and-spend monstrosity that our current model of government has become.





Peter