# The Black Hole of Government Waste and Corruption > ?"Washington will spend $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job." So stated an October 2009 report written by Brian M. Riedl, a Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs in the Thomas A. Roe… > URL: https://capitalismmagazine.com/2011/09/the-black-hole-of-government-waste-and-corruption/ > Last modified: 2012-03-03T04:19:42+00:00 ?”Washington will spend $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job.” So stated an October 2009 [report](http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/10/50-examples-of-government-waste) written by Brian M. Riedl, a Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Businesses are forced to provide that money. But Obama refuses to cut such spending. He demands more revenue. Tea Party Republicans argue against raising taxes and for spending cuts. But Warren Buffett wrote that the very rich should be taxed more. John C. Goodman, president and founder of the National Center for Policy Analysis—a free-market think tank—stated, “Consider that when Warren Buffett is consuming, he’s benefiting himself. When he’s saving and investing, he’s benefiting you and me. Every time Buffett . . . puts his money in the capital market, he’s doing an enormous favor for everyone else. A larger capital stock means higher productivity and that means everyone can have more income for the same amount of work.” The following day Jeff Carter, an independent speculator, published “The Buffett Deception.” Mr. Carter wrote, “Mr. Buffett has had a great career buying companies and integrating them into his empire. He ought to stick to that. His recent editorial in the New York Times shows the flaws in many arguments that come from the left. . . . Buffett’s logic also discounts how many Mom and Pop small businesses pay at the highest marginal rate.” Mr. Goodman and Mr. Carter’s articles are premised on free markets economics. Obama and Mr. Buffett’s views are premised on the political philosophy of Marx and Engels. Free market economics is concerned with the production of values. It recognizes that individuals must be free to think in order to build businesses and create values. Businesspeople—employer and employee alike—must be efficient, organized and resourceful. Their efforts swiftly raise the standard of living for everyone when government does not interfere. When government does interfere, businesspeople’s efforts are stifled and the standard of living is slowed,then curtailed, and finally reversed. Leftist’s political philosophy is focused on distributing the property of those that have created and/or earned it to those who have not. Such a focus relies on government-enforced distribution, which means government interference in the economy primarily through taxes and regulations. Taxes and regulations do not increase business. They do not create more enterprises. They do not create values or jobs. They do not raise the standard of living. But Obama refuses to cut spending. He demands more revenue. Taxes are spent to finance government officials and their programs. They are spent to pay government salaries, which on average exceed that of most businesspeople. They are spent to maintain the offices of almost a thousand government agencies, each with large staffs. Taxes are spent on duplicate programs, inefficient work and mismanagement. For instance, “Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties.” Taxes are wasted through fraud: “The federal government made at least $72 billion in improper payments in 2008.” But Obama refuses to cut spending and instead demands more revenue. When he does talk about cuts in spending he names Social Security, which owes those who were forced to pay into it out of earnings. He does not mention the 70+ programs that could be cut to save over $4.2 trillion without touching Social Security. Taxes should be spent to pay for the three proper functions of government: the police, the military and the courts. When tax money does not go to the proper functions of government it goes to improper functions. Mr. Riedl writes, “A GAO audit classified nearly half of all purchases ongovernment credit cards as improper, fraudulent, or embezzled. Examples of taxpayer-funded purchases include gambling, mortgage payments, liquor, lingerie, iPods, Xboxes, jewelry, Internet dating services, and Hawaiian vacations. In one extraordinary example, the Postal Service spent $13,500 on one dinner at a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, including “over 200 appetizers and over $3,000 of alcohol, including more than 40 bottles of wine costing more than $50 each and brand-name liquor such as Courvoisier, Belvedere and Johnny Walker Gold.” The 81 guests consumed an average of $167 worth of food and drink apiece.” In addition, recall the millions of taxpayer money that Obama spent on a 500-man entourage to visit Great Britain. But Obama refuses to cut spending. He demands more revenue. Andrew K. Dart writing “The Pork Page,” [http://www.akdart.com/pork.html](http://www.akdart.com/pork.html), lists a hundred misuses of taxpayer funds. Here are two examples:  “Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) while claiming to be a fiscal conservative, requested 149 projects worth $1.6 billion for authorization and appropriations bills for fiscal year 2010.” In December 2010, a bill “written by . . . members of the Appropriations Committee proposed spending nearly $8.3 billion.” The earmarks included $349,000 for swine waste management in North Carolina; $413,000 for peanut research in Alabama; $235,000 for noxious weed management inNevada; and $300,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii. Onerous taxes and strangling regulations do not create prosperity. They obliterate it. Taxes drain business resources into a black hole of government avarice, corruption and waste. Regulations do not protect the consumer. They strangle the producer. Taxes and regulations ravage the nation’s savings, suffocate ambition, undermine business operations, erase certainty and penalize the successful while rewarding the indigent. Tea Party Republicans are attacked almost every day on various interview shows and in the news. They are attacked because they refuse to give in to the Left’s political philosophy of tax, spend, borrow,tax. Let us make certain to increase the number of Tea Party Republicans come 2012. 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