For a lot of Americans, simply getting to or from work represents a significant expense. In fact, earlier this year, CNN‘s Kathryn Vasel totaled up the average annual expense that Americans pay just so that they can earn an income: Workers spend 200 hours annually at a cost of nearly $2,600 on their daily…
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We missed it before the Christmas holiday, but December 23 marked the annual celebration of Festivus, which if you’re fan of the old Seinfeld TV show or its reruns, you’ll recognize as the focal point of one of the show’s more memorable episodes. As fans of the show know, one of the core activities…
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Now that we’re well into the holiday season, where many of us will be going to parties, we thought we’d take a moment to consider how the politicians and bureaucrats who are employed by the federal government throw a party. If you’re a long time reader of MyGovCost, you probably have already guessed that…
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On Friday, December 18, 2015, President Obama signed into law the two massive spending and tax bills that the U.S. Congress passed earlier in the week. When he did, he dug the nation’s national debt hole over $1.2 trillion deeper over the next 10 years than it otherwise would have been, according to estimates…
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On Tuesday, December 15, 2015, while the Republican Party’s presidential candidates were debating national security issues in Las Vegas, House Speaker Paul Ryan reached a budget appropriations deal with congressional Democrats and the White House for how the U.S. government will spend the $1.1 trillion that his predecessor, John Boehner, signed on to spend…
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When Senator Tom Coburn retired last year, we wondered if his retirement would also mark the end of the Wastebook – the Oklahoma senator’s annual compendium of the most absurd items that the U.S. federal government spent money upon during the previous year. Fortunately not, as it appears that Senator Jeff Flake has picked…
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How is it that the politicians and bureaucrats who run governments at all levels of society, from cities to counties to states and territories, keep putting the institutions they control into financial jeopardy? Jeremy Liss of The Atlantic identifies the unique “cash-basis” accounting rules that politicians and bureaucrats apply to themseleves, which allows them…
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On Tuesday, December 1, 2015, the government of the fiscally-troubled U.S. terrritory of Puerto Rico was set to reach the end of its long road to defaulting on its debt, having run out of both money and time. Here’s how ZeroHedge described Puerto Rico’s predicament: Puerto Rico has a problem. The commonwealth needs to…
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According to President Obama, the best way to keep the terrorists who conducted a coordinated attack killing 130 in Paris, France last week from winning is for the leaders of the world’s nations to agree to a climate pact as an “act of defiance” as they meet in Paris this week. The Associated Press’…
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The senior leadership of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has decided that two of its executives who recently “plead the fifth” to avoid answering allegations related to their potential criminal misconduct before the U.S. Congress will not be purged from the government agency’s payroll. Nor will they be required to pay back the…
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