In An Eagle Unchained I point out examples of government waste, but I haven't even touched the huge amounts involved.  It has been estimated that a war on govenment waste could save over $100 billion annually without harming the benefits of any govenment programs.  Over the next few days I'll give some examples that should make your blood boil.  These examples come from an article by Brian M. Riedl for The Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org.

First there is the question of the missing $25 billion.  The Treasury Department, in its 2003 financial report, notes there was $24.5 billion in unreconciled transactions.  You may ask what is an unreconciled transaction?  It is funds for which the auditors can't account.  The auditors know that $25 billion was spent, but they don't know who spent it, where it was spent, or on what it was spent.  Just to put that amount of money into perspective, it was enough to have funded the Department of Justice for an entire year.

Second there is the question of unused commercial airline tickets totaling $100 million.  A recent audit revealed that between 1997 and 2003 the Defense Department purchased and then left unused some 270,000 commercial airline tickets at a total cost of that $100 million we just mentioned.  The Pentagon never even bothered to get a refund for these fully refundable tickets.  Between 2001 and 2002 the Pentagon also paid twice for some 27,000 tickets.  The department purchased the tickets directly and then for some unknown reason reimbursed the employee for the cost of the ticket.  This cost us, the taxpayers, an additional $8 million.

Don't you agree that something needs to be done about this waste of our hard earned money?  Let me know what you think, and come back to read about more examples over the next few days.