HURRICANE SANDY AID BILL INCLUDES $150 MILLION FOR ALASKAN FISHERIES

One out of every $20 spent in a new bill to aid victims of Hurricane Sandy will go to "non-relief-related pork," says American Majority Action Spokesman Ron Meyer in an email to Breitbart News.

On Friday, the U.S. Senate passed a $60.4 billion bill that contains expenditures for areas that were unaffected by the storm, including $2 million roof repairs for Smithsonian Institution museums, $150 million for Alaskan fisheries disasters, and $58 million in taxpayer dollars to plant trees on private property in areas where Sandy never touched down.  Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) attempted to remove the $150 million fisheries “pork” spending from the bill, but his amendment was defeated.  Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) tried to strike down the tree subsidies but his amendment failed as well.

“It’s disgraceful to load a bill like this that has good motives, that has good intentions that is going to help people, with pork,” said Mr. Meyer on Fox Business.  “Why are you putting your own projects in it? It’s disgraceful.  It’s typical of Washington.”

Particularly troubling, says Mr. Meyer, is the fact that 85% of the bill’s allocations do not kick in until after 2014.  “That’s not immediate relief,” says Meyer.

The bill passed the Senate on a 61-33 vote.  Twelve Republicans supported the bill.

Via: Breitbart

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Surprise, Surprise: Report Finds Homeland Security Wasting Money

In his oversight report, “Safety at Any Price: Assessing the Impact of Homeland Security Spending in U.S. Cities,” Senator Tom Coburn (R–OK) highlights several examples of cities using homeland security grants for ill-advised expenses. Senator Coburn’s report is an important one and a must read for the media and policymakers.

My hometown of Columbus, Ohio, is singled out for wasting terrorism funds on an underwater robot. In case you didn’t know, Columbus isn’t known for its large bodies of water, and not one tunnel in Central Ohio goes underneath water, so who knows what terrorist threat Mayor Michael Coleman sees in our shallow rivers.

Coburn, however, gets a couple of vital things wrong that would have made his report even more powerful. First, contrary to his report, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not fail “to issue preparedness goals, intended to shape the use of [Urban Areas Securities Initiative] funds, until last year—nine years after the program was created.” Secondly, DHS did not fail to establish “defined performance metrics to assess the effectiveness of federal expenditures made to date.”

As I detail in my 2009 book Homeland Security and Federalism: Protecting America from Outside the Beltway, DHS released the Initial National Preparedness Goal in April 2005, with the National Preparedness Guidelines (the successor document to the Initial National Preparedness Goal) in September 2007. The most recent National Preparedness Goal issued in September 2011 is just a warmed-over version of the older documents. The fact that these earlier documents existed makes Coburn’s points all the more troubling.

Via: The Foundry

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Report: 2,000 Dead People Received Food Stamps

(CNSNews.com) – New York and Massachusetts are administering food stamps to 2,000 dead people, according to Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) catalog of government waste.

The 2012 Waste Book, released earlier this week, documents $4.5 billion in waste in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps.

Among his findings, Coburn said that, “The USDA Inspector General found roughly 2,000 dead people are still receiving food stamps in New York and Massachusetts combined.”

“Additionally, its investigation revealed 7,236 people in these states are receiving duplicate benefits, while 286 are on state lists that should exclude them from receiving food stamps,” the report said, amounting to $1.4 million in unnecessary payments each month, or $147.03 for each recipient, dead or alive.

But the waste in SNAP does not end there, as Coburn found that individuals who smoke marijuana can receive added benefits.

“In three states,” Coburn writes, “some individuals received more food stamp benefits simply because they smoke marijuana.”

Under the section “More money for the marijuana munchies,” the Oklahoma Senator detailed how some states previously offered a deduction for pot smokers.

Marijuana cigarettes and marijuana pipe. (AP)

“Marijuana has been linked to an increased appetite, known as getting the ‘munchies,’ so perhaps it is no surprise the states of Maine, New Mexico, and Oregon gave extra food stamp benefits to users of the illegal drug,” the report states.

It continues: “These states allowed some marijuana users to deduct the cost of the drug from their income when determining the amount of the benefits provided for which they are eligible.  In Oregon, the deduction ‘[i]ncluded … fees for obtaining a state-issued medical marijuana card, expenses incurred while cultivating marijuana and the costs of purchasing it from a third-party grower.’”

Via: CNS News

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Senate report: Quarter of Social Security disability benefits improperly awarded

The Social Security Administration improperly awarded disability benefits in more than 25 percent of cases examined between 2006 and 2010, according to a new Senate report -- potentially costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

The findings conclude an 18-month investigation by the chamber’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and show that roughly a quarter of the 300 randomly selected disability cases were awarded benefits “without properly addressing insufficient, contradictory and incomplete evidence.” 

Each questionable decision can mean a big taxpayer expense. According to one estimate, the average lifetime disability award is $300,000. 

The investigation was led by Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, a medical doctor and the subcommittee’s top Republican. He said the bipartisan report shows information gathered over the past several years concludes the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs are “teetering on financial bankruptcy.”

The 136-page report focuses on questionable benefits rulings made by administrative law judges, including one in Oklahoma who was found to have awarded more than $1.6 billion in lifetime benefits in just three years. Judge Howard O’Bryan, in Oklahoma City, approved roughly 90 percent of more than 5,400 cases from 2007 to 2009 -- most of them held “on-the-record” without hearings, according to the minority report.

The report also found the agency since January 2009 added 5.9 million Americans to the disability rolls. And in 2011, 10.6 million people were receiving more $128.billion in disability insurance payments, the report said.

“The question is: Are benefits going only to those who are supposed to be getting to them?” Coburn asked Thursday during a Capitol Hill hearing on the issue. “The purpose of this program is to make sure that all Americans have a safety net if they become disabled and can no longer work. It should be remembered though that this law means ‘being unable to work any job in the national economy.’ ”

The Social Security Administration responded Monday, acknowledging the concerns and vowing continued improvement.

Via: Fox News

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