Free Talk Live

Title says "Cash for Clunkers under budget with 690,000 sales" but one paragraph says "It proved far more popular than lawmakers originally thought. Congress added another $2 billion to the original $1 billion budget when the first pot of money nearly ran out in a week. The extra money was supposed to last through Labor Day, but the funding only lasted about a month."

In other words, it was over budget before it was under budget after they made the budget larger, and even then, it was canceled just enough earlier than planned to keep it from consuming even the second "budget."

The U.S. Department of Defense got more than $9 billion from the sale of Iraqi oil and other revenue streams to be used for reconstruction inside the war-damaged nation and spent it but now cannot document where $8.7 billion of those funds went, according to an inspector general's report published online.

The fiscal 2011 funding bill roundly hailed for its "historic" spending cuts actually raised government spending by more than $3 billion, according to a new report.The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded Monday evening, "Total discretionary outlays in 2011 will be $3.2 billion higher as a result of the legislation, CBO estimates—an increase of $7.5 billion for defense programs, partially offset by a net reduction of $4.4 billion in other spending."

A US federal watchdog has criticised the US military for failing to account properly for billions of dollars it received to help rebuild Iraq.

(They sure as hell won't just 'criticize' you or I if we did the same thing....

NASA: Increasing the Awesome?

Contemplating the ritual of sending Washington a check every April 15, popular Internet vlogger Hank Green of Vlogbrothers explains why he believes NASA is worth every .45 penny of your hard-earned tax dollar.

The Military is Big Government Too, “Defense” Prepares for Deep Cuts, It’s About Time

Every time I write about this topic someone gets irritated and explains to me that “defense” is actually enumerated in the Constitution and so is a valid expenditure of taxpayer money.

Indeed “defense” is enumerated. Defense. What we have today is not defense, it is a massive military industrial complex which costs the taxpayers far too much. We wage wars in countries most Americans don’t even know exist. We have hundreds of bases around the world. All funded by the US taxpayer.

According to the Secretary of Defense an army of volunteers creates the problems of increased military costs and an increasing cultural gap between civilians and military personnel who come from similar geographies.

Troubled U.S. government-backed mortgage giant Fannie Mae on Monday asked for 8.4 billion dollars in additional federal aid to cover its huge losses.

Fannie Mae reported earlier Monday that it lost 13.1 billion dollars in the first quarter, or 2.29 dollars a share. It lost 23. 2 billion dollars in the same period a year ago.

The new aid will bring the total bill for rescuing Fannie and its sister company Freddie Mac to 145 billion dollars. The Obama administration has pledged to provide an unlimited amount of funds to Fannie and Freddie to keep them solvent.

According to previously undisclosed estimates, the United States is planning to spend $6 billion annually on supporting Afghanistan’s military and police starting in 2011, an expense which given the weak Afghan economy will probably continue more or less forever.

But the estimate could also be unrealistically low, as the administration spent about $9 billion this year and is planning to spend $11.6 billion next year on this expense.