As Elon Musk and his tech team urge their fellow Americans to become “domestic auditors” to help rein in federal spending, people have been encouraged to use the Treasury Department’s usaspending.gov website to identify and track government finance.
The total amount of spending across “all agencies,” as recorded at usaspending.gov, appears to be 50% higher than most experts interviewed for this article think it actually was.
In Fiscal Year 2024, for instance, the website pegs total spending at $9.7 trillion, when several experts said it was probably around $6.5 trillion. No one could explain the much bigger figure. Officials with usaspending.gov conceded to RCI that their totals were wrong and said the error, which shows up in similar fashion for the last five fiscal years would be fixed soon. They offered neither an explanation for their higher total nor an estimate of what it should be. Two weeks later, the erroneous figures remain.
Budget experts say the website’s seeming multi-trillion-dollar error illustrates a core challenge Musk and his colleagues at the Department of Government Efficiency face as they try to reduce Washington’s spending. In a twist on the classic Washington line, the problem is not just following the money but finding it in the first place. The federal government has become so big and so expensive that even experts have trouble navigating the morass of contracts, awards, grants, loans, and other items that have transformed the U.S. spreadsheet into a labyrinth pitted with dead ends and rabbit holes.
“When you see the process has become so arcane even I don’t claim these are real, hard numbers, then you know the process is definitely and irreparably FUBAR,” said David Ditch, using the acronym for “fouled up beyond all repair.” He spent years poring over federal budgets and spending at the conservative Heritage Foundation before moving this month to the Economic Policy Innovation Center. […]
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Entire agencies just need eliminated. They don’t help me in the least. I am for reform. The waste of tax dollars is incredible. I can’t believe what they’ve done with it. I believe 70% of all federal agencies employees expenses are totally unneeded. It could be higher?
The Fed Government is like a game of “STACKING WOOD STICKS” …the budget is intentionally put solidly at the very bottom, so any touch of it will cause the entire hugely tall structure of stacked sticks to fall. American taxpayers have had enough: FIX THE BUDGET EVEN IF THE STACK COMES CRASHING DOWN !!! (THE GOOD NEWS: IT WILL FALL MOSTLY ON USELESS, INCOMPETENT, ENTRENCHED BUREAUCRATS AND DEEP STATE AUTOCRATS !!!)