Government Is Broken

Posted on Posted in Politics

Is there anything our Government can do well anymore?

Given the rash of scandals and the lack of any meaningful progress on issues that affect American society, the answer is an unequivocal no.

Consider these examples:

Transportation Security Agency (TSA)

Veterans Administration (VA)

  • Allowed its customers to die in order to cook the books on wait times so bonuses could be paid (while we give refugees from the middle east and illegal immigrants from Mexico free education, food stamps, medical care, and housing allowances).
  • Instead of firing top administrators when treatment of Veterans (wait times) was exposed as being rampant at many VA hospitals, these administrators were reinstated, re-assigned, or allowed to retire.
  • Officials caught up in a promotions scandal were not able to be fired and more, and more, and more, and more.

Health & Human Services (HHS)

  • The inability of the Department of Health and Human Services to create a website for the ACA (Obamacare)
  • Squandering millions of taxpayer dollars by sole-source contracting to a Canadian software firm for the failed government website, then doubling down and having the same company contracted to fix it (while demanding no reimbursement)
  • A single-payer healthcare system that rewards those with existing conditions with low-cost healthcare at the expense of the healthy and fails on the promise to reduce premiums for the average household by $2500/yr and assures that you can “keep your policy and keep your doctor” (average premiums are increasing 27% for 2016 and out-of-pocket expenses are nearly $10K per family)
  • Inability to monitor, correct, or recover billions of dollars in Medicare/Medicaid payments from fraud, waste, and abuse
  • Providing healthcare subsidies to illegal immigrants despite the ACA explicitly prohibiting it and supporting failing co-ops.

Social Security Administration

State Department

  • the failure to protect our Ambassador and military personnel from attack and murder in Benghazi
  • the failure to act in a timely manner to rescue Embassy personnel in Benghazi by authorizing military resources to respond despite testimony that there was sufficient time to deploy air and ground support but orders were given to “stand down”.
  • An incoherent strategy to depose the Libyan dictator without considering the vacuum created that allowed terrorists to seize control of the country

Department of Justice (DoJ)

  • Conducting a secret operation to allow weapons to be sold to Mexican cartels (fast and furious)
  • criminal illegal immigrants being released into communities to prey upon Americans
  • complete abandonment of enforcement of immigration laws (sanctuary cities, catch-and-release, deportation, visa overstays)
  • Unbridled and lavish spending

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

  • Targeting of conservative groups when applying for 501C tax status (see more here)
  • Failure to secure computer hardware and records under order by the Senate to preserve data for a Congressional investigation
  • Payment of tax refunds in the billions of dollars (25% of all payments) to dead, illegal immigrants, and scam artists, and particularly through the earned income tax credit.
  • A bureaucracy that can prosecute a private citizen for neglecting to pay a nickel in owed taxes but allows delinquent government employees owing over $3 Billion in unpaid taxes to go uncollected (why not garnish their wages or fire them?)

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

  • Inability to conduct effective background checks on refugees or track visa overstays
  • Not checking Facebook or other social media as part of immigrant background checks as in the San Bernardino terrorists

Executive Branch

  • A Nobel Peace Prize winning President who has created more war and strife than any predecessor (Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, Libya)
  • Complete disregard for the Constitution’s requirement for separation of powers by using Executive Orders to go around Congress (recess appointments, funding for Global Climate Change, funding reimbursement for Healthcare providers (risk corridors)
  • A welfare infra-structure that entraps more in a cycle of dependence by discouraging work (food stamps, housing allowances, medical care, school breakfast/lunch/dinner programs,
  • Implement laws and treaties without the consent of Congress

Education Department

  • Unable to increase student and minority achievement despite decades of increased spending per pupil
  • Instituting a school lunch nutritional program designed by Michelle Obama that results in children throwing away most of their food and smuggling food that they like to eat.
  • Implementing an Executive Order to allow transgender students to use the restroom and locker room of their “chosen identity”

Department of Energy (DOE)

  • The letting of contracts to ideologically favored companies, some with traceable connections to political campaign contributions, for advancement of green energy objectives (Solyndra, A123, Fiskers more,  Nevada Geothermal. Ivanpah) that resulted in loss of hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars
  • Inability to develop a comprehensive energy  policy to exploit America’s vast resources (coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear) to make us energy independent

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

  • Abandoning the lead in space exploration by discontinuing the Space Shuttle program and outsourcing launches to Russia
  • Re-aligning their mission to do outreach to Muslims for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)
  • Manipulating climate data to support the Climate Change agenda

United States Postal Service (USPS)

  • A department that has lost over $36 billion since 2011 and keeps increasing rates to cover its failure to operate at a profit

AMTRAK

  • This government funded railway system loses a billion dollars annually despite increase in ridership from mostly affluent and Washington DC connected commuters while being heavily subsidized

Commerce Department

  • Continually advocates for foreign over American works by advocating with large businesses to bring in foreign workers (H1b visas)
  • Failure to cooperate with a Congressional investigation and failure to discipline employees who surfed porn sites while at work

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

  • Attempts to regulate ponds as navigable waterways without legal precedence while polluting the environment and refuses to apologize or discipline anyone responsible (coverup)
  • Failing to be good stewards of the environment and of taxpayer expenditures (Easton project)

Bureau of Land Management

  • Considers farmers and ranchers to be adversaries and controls almost 28% of all land in the US and 85% of the land in Nevada.
  • Permits for gas and oil exploration are lagging due to longer processing times and fewer issuance’s.
  • The scandal of the slaughter of over 50,000 wild horses and implication of a conflict of interest by Ken Salazar (Sec of Interior).

National Park Service

If this isn’t enough to convince you that our mammoth, unaccountable federal bureaucracy is incapable of seeing the issues due to an overly complex structure that cannot operate efficiently, then I have not done an adequate job.

There are over 250 Federal agencies. Federal, State, and local Government employees outnumber those in manufacturing by 1.8:1.

I have compiled hundreds more examples but space dictates that I stop.  If you want more proof, do a Google search of any government agency by name + scandal, then read on. I also encourage you to look at annual compilations of Wastebook and Pigbook.