{"id":308575,"date":"2010-02-11T17:36:38","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T22:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.szone.us\/f95\/record-snowfall-doesn-t-stop-record-federal-spending-39327\/"},"modified":"2010-02-11T17:36:38","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T22:36:38","slug":"record-snowfall-doesn%c2%92t-stop-record-federal-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/308575","title":{"rendered":"Record Snowfall Doesn\u0092t Stop Record Federal Spending"},"content":{"rendered":"
On 02.11.10 12:00 PM posted by Jessica LaHousse<\/p>\n

\n<ahref="http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/snow-dc.jpg">\"\"<\/p>While two brutal snowstorms pounded the Washington, DC, area, the government was busy wasting money to the tune of $100 million a day. Extreme weather conditions forced the government to close for four and a half days straight, costing tax payers $450 million in lost productivity, <ahref="http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/2010\/02\/10\/governments-million-day-loss-snowstorm\/">according to a Fox News report.<\/p>\n

Wondering how much $100 million really is for the government? Last spring, when President Barack Obama ordered his cabinet secretaries to cut $100 million in spending, Heritage\u0092s Ken McIntyre <ahref="http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/Press\/ALAChart\/alachart-detail.cfm?customel_datapageid_244663=317720">took a look at what $100 million really means. For some context that will knock your socks off, he cited the following observation from Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY):<\/p>\n

We\u0092ll spend about that much every single day just on interest payments for the $787 billion stimulus bill that Congress passed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<spanid="more-26219"><\/span><\/p>\n

All that interest was for on an expensive stimulus package that <ahref="http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/Research\/Economy\/wm2799.cfm">may or may not have had any impact on the struggling economy. Which would you rather spend your hard-earned tax dollars on: one day of stimulus interest payments or one of the federal government\u0092s operating expenses?<\/p>\n

Furthering his analysis, McIntyre <ahref="http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/Press\/ALAChart\/alachart-detail.cfm?customel_datapageid_244663=317720">also cited Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist and economist, who compared $100 million to an entire year of federal spending:<\/p>\n

Let\u0092s say the administration finds $100 million in efficiencies every working day for the rest of the Obama administration\u0092s first term. That\u0092s still around $80 billion, or around 2 percent of one year\u0092s federal spending.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To the average American tax payer, $100 million might seem staggering; most people won\u0092t see that much money over the course of their entire lives. But, for the government, it is quite a different story, as <ahref="http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/Press\/ALAChart\/alachart-detail.cfm?customel_datapageid_244663=317720">McIn tyre points out, “Actually, $100 million might as well be nothing next to federal spending exploding well past $3.5 trillion.\u0094<\/p>\n

It looks like wasting $450 million dollars is just a drop in the bucket for the federal government. <ahref="http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/02\/11\/AR2010021100995.html?hpid=topnews">The record snowfall may have stopped Washington for a few days, but <ahref="http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/Research\/Features\/BudgetChartbook\/Federal-Spending-Skyrocketing.aspx">record government spending, and its effects, are sure to linger long after the snow is gone.<\/p>\n

Jessica LaHousse currently is a member of the Young Leaders Program at the Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: <ahref="http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/about\/departments\/ylp.cfm">http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/about\/departments\/ylp.cfm<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/02\/11\/…eral-spending\/<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 02.11.10 12:00 PM posted by Jessica LaHousse <ahref="http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/snow-dc.jpg"><\/p>While two brutal snowstorms pounded the Washington, DC, area, the government was busy wasting money to the tune of $100 million a day. Extreme weather conditions forced the government to close for four and a half days straight, costing tax payers $450 million in lost productivity, <ahref="http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/2010\/02\/10\/governments-million-day-loss-snowstorm\/">according […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}