It was your money

January 10, 2006 @ Michael Hampton → One Comment

“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money,” Everett Dirksen once said.

Here are a few places billions of dollars, which might have otherwise been in your paycheck, actually went.

$588.9 million of federal money has been used in response and recovery to Hurricane Rita so far. That’s just individual assistance. The state of Texas is getting $477.6 million on top of that.
The figures for Alabama state and individual aid from Hurricane Katrina come to $519 million. The numbers for Mississippi and Louisiana weren’t in yet.
A $104 million TSA screener contract ballooned to $741 million in order to meet difficult deadlines mandated by Congress, and for other purposes.
And the award for an ICE small business set-aside contract worth $45 million didn’t actually go to a small business.
But all that pales in comparison to the defense budget. The Special Operations Command wants $7.4 billion to expand SOCOM by 12,000 people.

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One Comment → “It was your money”

drtempleton

Nov 22, 2006

having worked with a private contractor at Kansas City International Airport, this article merely shows how ineffective/ineffiencent our government has gotten when it comes to getting a job complete. everything is resorting to private contracts, therefore we get more chiefs than indians and everyone is scraping to be a chief therefore nothing gets done. the TSA branch to Homeland Security is a total joke and it begins with this private contractor idea. whatever idiot surmmized that program is surely only playing 51 instead of the whole deck. disparaging salaaries and inconsistent work task. many employees are rent-a-cop rejects or law enforcements wanna-be’s. what is needed across the board task no deviations, not air facility is unique other than (ie; terminal/concourse), stricter standards regarding hiring practices and adequate training. this program truly needs significant restructure and no matter what is publicized it’s good enough for the head-honchos. and those who suffer are the employees.

thank you
Former Employee (Resigned) Not Terminated

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