The United States Federal Government is over 20.8 Trillion dollars in debt. This is an obscenely high number. Irresponsible spending from both parties has led to this insurmountable debt.
Both parties have their favorite government spending programs that they refuse to cut, which leads to consistent major deficits in the budget. It’s time to take a thorough look at the Federal budget and find where we can cut spending. If the Federal Government does not start to cut spending, the younger generations are going to have to deal with paying higher taxes in order to pay off the debt.
In this list, I will state and dissect the most wasteful and useless areas of government spending that should end immediately.
- The U.S. Government is paying over 11 million dollars for, “fostering clean energy… IN VIETNAM.” I cannot fathom why the U.S. is spending millions of dollars on helping Vietnam get clean energy. It’s one thing to subsidize our clean energy industry but subsidizing Vietnam’s clean energy industry is pure government waste.
- The US government is paying 98 million dollars to “promote tourism…IN JORDAN.” The only country that we should be promoting tourism to is the U.S. It makes no logical sense to promote tourism to a foreign country. The U.S. should be drawing people to the U.S. for tourism, not to Jordan.
- The U.S. Government is paying 8.2 billion dollars a year to fund the Rural Electrification Administration (REA). The REA was started in 1935 under President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. The goal was to bring electricity to America’s rural communities. This was altruistic and admirable, however, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, by 1981, “98.7 percent of electrification and 95 percent of telephone service coverage was achieved,” in rural communities. Despite achieving the stated goal, not only has the REA not been shut down, but the program has been expanding. As Milton Friedman famously said, “[N]othing is as permanent as a temporary government program.”
- The U.S. Government has spent 1.5 TRILLION dollars on the development of the F-35 fighter jet and continues to spend billions more. This project has already taken 16 years and is currently 6 years behind schedule. Rather than end this mess of a program, the Department of Defense deemed it too big to fail at this point, so the U.S. is going to keep on funding this failed program for the foreseeable future.
- The U.S. Government is spending 15 million dollars to train cashiers in Mexico. The US is spending money training a foreign workforce. We should be investing that money in training veterans and impoverished citizens so they can learn the skills needed to succeed in the modern economy, to then become self-sufficient and have dignity. Instead, the Government is spending money on training people in Mexico.
Overall, the purpose of this list is to chastise both parties because they claim we need all the current levels of spending. It’s time to reduce the size of the bloated Federal Government to better resemble the government our Founders initially envisioned for the country. Either that, or we will spend our whole lives paying off the debt and potentially have a debt crisis that resembles what happened in Greece.
David Suslenskiy
David Suslenskiy is a Senior at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying Business and Political Science. David is an Editor and Contributor at Lone Conservative. His interests include fishing, video games, politics, movies, and reading.
The views expressed in this article are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Lone Conservative staff.
@DavidSuslensky
