Please, gentle reader, allow me to ask you a couple of  indelicate questions:

Are you having trouble trying to make ends meet in this Obamanation of an economy?

Are you as torqued off as the rest of us about out-of-control spending by the Federal Government?

Well, then, you may not want to read the rest of this post.

According to foxnews.com, the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan group, has released an eye-opening report which targets billions of dollars in potential savings if Congress has with the intestinal fortitude to suck it up and turn off the money flow to taxpayer-funded programs for politically popular causes.

Your “wealth” spread by your government, sustains 47 job-training programs, 44 of which are redundant. Your “wealth” also pays for 80 programs for the “transportation disadvantaged.”

There are also 82 programs, operated by 10 separate agencies, whose sole purpose is to improve teacher quality.

I thought hundreds of local school districts were already working on that?

Politicians have promised for a long time to cut out Government waste, fraud and abuse. So, yesterday, they jumped on this report with both feet.

House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said that he and his fellow Republicans would “get our fiscal house in order” in light of the report:

Now again, we have said enough is enough. Our Congress is about delivering results.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said in a statement Tuesday morning:

This report confirms what most Americans assume about their government. We are spending trillions of dollars every year and nobody knows what we are doing. The executive branch doesn’t know. The congressional branch doesn’t know. Nobody knows. This report also shows we could save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars every year without cutting services.

According to the report:

Reducing or eliminating duplication, overlap or fragmentation could potentially save billions of taxpayer dollars annually and help agencies provide more efficient and effective services.

The study found 33 areas with “overlap and fragmentation” in the federal government.

Here are some more examples of “your tax dollars at work”:

• Fifty-six programs across 20 agencies dealing with financial literacy.
• More than 2,100 data centers — up from 432 a little more than a decade ago — across 24 federal agencies. GAO estimated the government could save up to $200 billion over the next decade by consolidating them.
• Twenty programs across seven agencies dealing with homelessness. The report found $2.9 billion spent on the programs in 2009. “Congress is often to blame” for fragmentation, GAO wrote in this section, explaining that the duplicative programs in multiple agencies cause access problems for potential participants.
• Eighty-two “distinct” teacher-quality programs across 10 agencies. Many of them have “duplicate sub-goals,” GAO said. Nine of them address teacher quality in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.
• Fifteen agencies administering 30 food-related laws.
• Eighty economic development programs.

The report goes on to state:

Some of the oversight doesn’t make any sense.

Gee, ya think, DiNozzo?

Some of these questionable programs had a hard time justifying their existence. For example, domestic food assistance initiatives.

Per the GAO report, 18 of these programs are administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services. GAO estimates $62.5 billion of taxpayer money is being doled out to them.

What’s worse, “little is known about the effectiveness” of 11 of those programs, the report states.

And, regarding the 47 job-training programs run by Uncle Sugar, only five could come up with an “impact study” since 2004 looking at “outcomes.” About half of them produced no performance review at all since 2004.

Congress asked GAO to provide them with a study of

…federal programs, agencies, offices and initiatives with duplicative goals and activities, to estimate the cost of such duplication and to make recommendations to Congress for consolidation and elimination of such duplication.

I don’t think that Congress expected the size and scope of waste in government programs that the report informed them of.

Of course, it has become a political football, with the Republicans attempting to look like they’re in compliance with the mandate given on November 2nd, 2010, and the Democrats trying to appear like they actually want to bite the hand that feeds them and make cuts to these programs of government largesse that they initiated in the first place.

But don’t worry, President Barack Hussein Obama  is willing to make a deep sacrifice, according to his proposed Federal Budget.

And, if you believe that, you believe Charlie Sheen has embraced sobriety.

Allow me to end today’s blog with an e-mail that I received this morning that sums up Scooter’s Federal Budget Proposal very well :

Our “President” has ordered his cabinet to cut a whopping $100 Million from our $3.5 trillion federal budget!

I’m so impressed by this sacrifice that I have decided to do the same thing with my personal budget.

I spend about $2000 a month on groceries, household expenses, medicine, utilities, etc, but it’s time to get out the budget cutting ax, go line by line through my expenses, and cut back!

I’m going to cut my spending at exactly the same ratio:-1/35,000 of my total budget.

After doing the math, it looks like instead of spending $2000 a month; I’m going to have to cut that number by six (6) cents!

Yes, I’m going to have to get by with $1999.94, but that’s what sacrifice is all about. I’ll just have to do without some things, that are, frankly, “luxuries.” (Did OBAMA actually think no one would do the math? Oh, I forgot, liberals don’t rely on FACTS, they rely on “feel good” emotions).

John Q. Taxpayer