WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) released its December 2016 WasteWatcher, a monthly dispatch to members of the news media, highlighting some of the most prominent fiscal issues affecting American taxpayers. The stories from its December edition of WasteWatcher are listed in part as follows:
Anachronistic
Earmark Offering from Culberson, Rogers, and Rooney
By Sean
Kennedy
Americans might fondly remember 2006: Pirates of the
Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was the top grossing movie, Sexyback
by Justin Timberlake was at the top of the charts, and Bob Barker
announced his retirement from The Price is Right. Other events
might not harken such recollections, particularly the record $29 billion
worth of earmarks that members of Congress stuffed into the fiscal year
(FY) 2006 appropriations bills. Read the full story here.
Power
of the Purse and Budget Process Reform
By Rachel Cole
Since
the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (CBA) was first passed, Congress
has been able to pass the 12 appropriations bills on time on only three
occasions; the most recent was in 1997. Although the CBA has been
amended several times, the budget process remains as broken as it is
confusing. Read the full story here.
Fixing
the FCC
By Deborah Collier
President-elect Trump is
making it clear that there will be many changes made to how federal
agencies work, including significant streamlining of regulations in
order to generate economic growth. At or near the top of that long list
is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which has acted more as
an activist arm of the White House over the past eight years than an
independent technical body. Read the full story here.
Beware
of Midnight Regulations
By Curtis Kalin
As President
Barack Obama’s term comes to an end, many federal agencies and
departments are attempting to beat the clock by jamming a flurry of new
regulations onto the books before January 20, 2017. Read the full
story here.
Recovery
Auditors and the Administrative Law Backlog: More “Fake News” Debunked
By
Leslie Paige
In the absence of data and facts, it is all too easy
for other narratives to take hold and difficult to root them out once
they gain traction. Such is the case with one such public policy
problem, the recovery audit contracting (RAC) program at the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency that oversees two of
the nation’s largest, most important, and most costly entitlement
programs, Medicare and Medicaid. Read the full story here.
The
Trump Trifecta: Three Branches, New Faces
By William M.
Christian
The 2016 GOP sweep of all three branches of government
amounts to a political trifecta. The American people will be governed,
for at least the next four years, by a very different president and a
very different cabinet. Read the full story here.
NPS
Ban on Bottled Water – “Going Forward”
By Elizabeth Wright
For
more than a year, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has been
investigating the National Park Service’s (NPS) ban on the sale of
bottled water, believing it was an obtrusive inconvenience to visitors
and a waste of taxpayer dollars. Read the full story here.
“Netflix
Tax” in California
By Andrew Nehring
Cities in the
Golden State are exploring what they might call a “golden opportunity”
to compensate for the loss of tax revenue from declining
cable-television subscriptions as more Americans choose video streaming
services like Netflix and Hulu. Read the full story here.
CAGW is the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.
