Waste in Government Spending

Waste in government is a favorite topic in Washington, D. C. That's all together fitting, as most of the people talking about government waste are those primarily responsible for it, and they are all congregated in a relatively small area stretching from the Capitol Building to the White House.

It is old hat to pick up a newspaper and read about a $400 screwdriver purchased for the Navy, or a $1,500 toilet seat acquired for the Air Force. Senator Jesse Helms, however, provided renewed interest in government waste, when he challenged some of the projected funds by the National Endowment for the Arts. The senator's favorites apparently were a portrait of Christ submerged in a vat of urine, and explicit photographs of

1 2male homosexual sex acts. The senator appeared to be quite well informed on the minute details of these socalled works of art.

As absurd as the Defense Department purchases of excessively expensive toilet seats and screwdrivers are, and as distasteful as the art described above is, however, such item

. . .
did not originate with Nixon, Ford, Carter, or Reagan. The last federal budget surplus occurred in fiscal 1969 (Barth, and Morrell, 1982), and that is the only one which has been recorded in the past 25years (Council of Economic Advisers, 1989). Under Ronald Reagan, however, federal budget deficits spiraled to undreamed of heights, and, many economists think, threaten the future economic staility of the country (Morris, 1989). Reasons for Growth of the Budget Deficit During the Second World War, the federal budget deficit increased, because of the need to fight an allout war, and by the need to finance that war by an economy which had been in serious recession for 10 years. The largest of these wartime deficits was $54.9 billion in 1943, and the cumulative wartime deficit was $186.1 billion.5 Following the end of the Second World War, major problems with the federal budget (in the context of deficits) eased. Once again, however, federal budget deficits soared, when the Viet Nam War was financed in the 1960s and 1970s. The Kennedy and Johnson Administrations in particular, and the __________ 5Calculated from data obtained from: Council of Economic A
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2489
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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