- In 2010, the Internal Revenue Service spent $4.1 million on a lavish conference for 2,609 of its employees in Anaheim, California. Expenses included $50,000 for line dancing and “Star Trek” parody videos, and $64,000 in conference perks for employees, plus free meals, cocktails and hotel-suite upgrades.
- In 2012, the Department of Agriculture spent $300,000 on activities promoting caviar produced in Idaho.
- The Federal Communications Commission spent $2.2 billion in 2012 to provide phones to low-income Americans, up from $819 million in 2008. A review found that 41 percent of over 6 million recipients were either ineligible or failed to prove their eligibility for the program.
- The Department of Energy’s Savannah River facility spent $7.7 million on severance packages for 526 temporarily hired contract workers instead of issuing layoff notices.
- The U.S. Secret Service spent $23 million to purchase a new fleet of luxury parade limousines. No competitive bids were sought.
- The White House is spending $376 million on a four-year renovation of the Executive Mansion, which includes a second Oval Office for the president to use during the renovation.
- The General Services Administration’s poor oversight of 33 courthouse-construction projects from 2000 to 2010 cost taxpayers $835 million in extra building expenses.
- The National Endowment for the Arts gave a $100,000 grant to fund development of a video game about a female superhero sent to save planet Earth from climate changes.
- The Transportation Security Administration let 5,700 pieces of unused security equipment worth $184 million sit in storage in a Dallas warehouse, costing taxpayers $3.5 million annually to lease and manage.
- This year, the U.S. government will pay $65 per year, per account, in service fees to keep 13,712 of its empty bank accounts — with no money in them — on the books, costing taxpayers $890,000.
- Medicare was recently found to have overpaid hospitals and clinics for a kidney dialysis drug to the tune of $800 million per year, an error that won’t be corrected until new rates are established in 2014.
- A 2012 report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration identified $757 million in fraudulent tax refunds to prisoners in 2010.
- Due to poor oversight, over 1,000 Pennsylvania prisoners were able to collect weekly unemployment benefits over a four-month period, costing taxpayers $7 million.
- A fiscal 2011 Performance and Accountability Report from the Social Security Administration (SSA) found it overpaid $2.11 billion in Social Security benefits.
- The same report found that the SSA overpaid old-age, survivor and disability insurance benefits by $934 million in fiscal 2010 alone.
- Also in 2010, 117,000 individuals received $850 million in cash benefits by double-dipping into Social Security’s disability insurance program and the federal unemployment insurance program.
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded a $149,992 grant to researchers at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey to study college students’ on-campus dining selections.
- The Office of Naval Research conducted a $450,000 study to determine whether babies would pay attention to unintelligent robots.
- In a study costing $681,387, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research confirmed that men bearing firearms appear taller, stronger and manlier than those who don’t carry firearms.
- The same U.S. Air Force office also conducted a $300,000 study that concluded that the first bird on Earth probably had black feathers.
