The doors are closed on the White House tours due to the budget cuts caused by the sequester. Fox News Live Tuesday, March 5, 2013 calls this a “manufactured” budget cut. This seems almost ludicrous in the scope of things. Just what will cutting the White House tours do for the money problems in the U.S.? Has anyone looked at the frivolous spending in the government lately?
According to the Fox News website on Tuesday, the spending cuts close the doors on the White House. Is this really the way to go with the best interest of the American public in mind? Or is this the best way to go to get the sequester doom and gloom placed front and center in the headlines? The White House is closed for visitor tours starting March 9, 2013 and will stay that way until further notice.
Travelers were warned that their wait time in airports could double, due to the cuts in the TSA budget, according to CNN News. The Transportation Security Administration is adopting a hiring freeze and cutting overtime, which will make the already slow lines at the airport come to almost a crawl. If you usually wait two hours in a busy airport, expect to have a four hour wait now to get through the TSA checkpoints.
This might be another way to showcase the President’s predictions of doom for the sequester. This won’t cause problems behind the scenes where the majority of American’s would never hear about it. This will cause problems that will make the nightly news. '
The same goes for shutting down the big house on Pennsylvania Ave. This is a big destination for vacationers in the spring when the cherry blossoms bloom. Again, it is more cuts in an area that will make headlines and cause angst to many Americans with many more hearing about it! These cuts are just a drop in the bucket compared to the money that's spent on frivolous things in the government.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to go after the frivolous government spending? The amount of money wasted is astronomical, like the $10 million for a remake of a popular kids show for Pakistan, which was shelled out in 2010. The political conventions cost taxpayers $35 million in 2012 and the list just doesn’t stop here, according to the judicial watch blog, Corruption Chronicals.
China got $18 million for social services and environmental programs while their economy is much better than the U.S.. Then there was the $2 million spent on a wine exhibition and culinary center in Washington State. The Department of Agriculture spent $300,000 in 2012 to promote caviar.
According to the CATO Institute, The U.S. Agency for International Development spent $30 million to “spur mango production and sales in Pakistan - and failed utterly.” A federal grant for $765,828 went to “bring an International House of Pancakes franchise to Washington, D.C.”
Dead employees were sent $120 million from the Office of Personal Management. Preserving historic video games cost $113, 277, which went to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games. You can do the math, without spending like this just think of the money saved.
HUD handed over $484,000 in a grant to build a Mellow Mushroom Pizza Backers restaurant in Texas. Researcher who were studying the impact of television and gas generators in Vietnam got $702, 558.
To spur the adoption of broadband, $936, 818 was handed over by the Department of Commerce to create a soap opera on single moms. It only cost $175, 587 for the University of Kentucky to study the impact of cocaine on the sex drive of the Japanese quail. This money came from the National Institute of Health.
The list is vast and maybe it is this type of spending that the government should go after and curtail, then the White House tours could not only afford to go on, but there would probably be enough left over to serve the visitors some of that caviar the government spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote! What do you think?
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