What in your opinion the biggest waste of taxpayer's money?

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Um, no, we think it's better for all involved parties for the welfare recipients to be employed if practicable. I'll agree that we need some kind of social safety net but it needs to be limited in scope and quantity.
I've talked about this before and I'm sure you read it while you wrung your hands.


Who cares what the rest of the world does? Do you actually place higher value on a country with the most people on the dole? Well, I guess you would.


Not with the poor but with the liberals that want to keep the poor on relief for life just so they can have poster children for their socialist agenda.
My ancestors came to this country in the late 19th century LEGALLY (and ,yeah, LEGALLY is actually a big thing) and POOR but did not have welfare at all. Want to tell me how they made it since it's impossible to do anything without welfare? Believe it or not people back then had the same needs as they do now.


I don't even have to read down to see what's coming.


Drum roll.............

And there it is! /\ More like the problem as seen through Panda's eyes.
I can tell you that most all of the waste I've seen is money and resources wasted at the behest of the government itself that can't make up it's mind what it wants its contractors to do.

Your turn, not that you ever really have anything to come back with....

Yours truly,
the Repugnican

Ummm... it already is limited in scope and quantity.


And little green men are flying out my ass...

Two can play that game. Here's the real story:

Brainless lower-middle class conservative knuckledraggers with empty and meaningless existences just need a good excuse to kick some loser women and children to the curb so they can feel better about themselves. Conservatives have a mix of Stockholm syndrome towards their rich overlords and senseless schadenfreude towards those they see as being even lower on the social totem than themselves. That's why you guys consistently vote for jackasses who would wish to turn the USA into a third world wasteland while lining their pockets with political donations from a bunch of billionaires who pay them to cut their taxes at the expense of popular social programs like medicaid and medicare.


Yup. They had the same needs. Those needs just weren't met as often and the poor suffered a hell of a lot more. I'd be willing to bet more of them died of preventable diseases back then as well. Ahhh, the good old days!

My family has been here since before the revolution, but we have German origins. My sister is a member of the Daughters of the Revolution.

About all I'm seeing here is your usual emotional gymnastics. Nothing original or of substance worthy of commenting on that I or other conservatives haven’t already torn apart with you and/or your cronies over and over before. I guess it really is true that collectivism stagnates creativity after all…..

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I always laugh when Republicans confuse liberals and socialists. Believe, me they are not the same thing! The Democrats are (sort of) social liberals, meaning they want a degree of social justice within what is basically a free market economy. In all honesty, they would rank as conservative in most places in the Western world.

Anyway, that's besides the point. The single biggest waste of money is probably the military, at least in Canada. Give it enough for peace keeping and disaster relief, but don't go and spend $60 billion on fighter jets that we don't need. Next would be subsidies to fossil fuel companies. These are profitable industries, and in any case it sends the wrong message in a time that we should be moving away from fossil fuels. Finally, there's the propaganda playing on the TV all the time about Stephen Harper's economic action plan and how wonderful it is. If it's so wonderful then we shouldn't need advertisements to remind us!

My cronies.

The point being that it's getting especially dumb to continue subsidizing an industry where the oil/gas companies AND the oil-rich nations can effectively name their own prices.

So the solution to our problem can consist of one or both of two things (in addition to the cessation of oil and gas subsidization, because that's just bullsh*t):

- First, that we ourselves become a dominant nation ("dominant," in this case, is defined as being in control of gas and oil supplies) or lessen the dominance of other nations over us when it comes to petroleum, i.e. allow offshore drilling and drilling in other places within our nation's borders.

- Second, that we find alternative sources of energy, i.e. "green" energy.

This issue is real close to me, as I have to do a lot of driving for my job and for other reasons beyond my control. And I'm certainly not the only person to whom this issue is close. This crap with sky-high gas prices has to stop. I don't know how people just put up with it every day without congregating on D.C. en masse with lit torches and searing tempers.

Get a bike and ride it. That will teach them.

ruveyn

Congregate on D.C. en masse with lit torches and searing tempers.

Lets go!! !

You need to draw a distinction between classifications of government spending. You can't compare the F-35 package with, say, health transfers to the provinces, because the F-35 purchase is a one-time purchase, whereas health transfers are ongoing spending.

Government spending falls into several broad categories:

1) Government operations--salaries and benefits for public servants, operations and maintenance on buildings and assets, leases, supplies, travel, training, etc. etc.
2) Program expenditures--Provincial and Territorial transfers, Grants and Contributions to First Nations program delivery, Contracts
3) Acquisitions--purchase of durable Crown assets
4) Tax expenditures--tax credits and tax cuts
5) Interest expense

and so on.

In one sense, the most wasteful spending is interest spending. But one should always balance the debt incurred against the benefit that was received from the money borrowed, as compared with the alternative of raising that money through taxes, levies and fees at the time. On balance, interest is still very punitive, but government is legally obliged to pay interest on its lawful debt, so it's not discretionary payment.

Next comes tax expenditure. Tax cuts are, far and away the least successful means for government to stimulate the economy or to achieve public policy goals. While lower taxes may be a viable public policy goal, they must be understood as part of the expenditure problem.

Within the other three, acquisitions are certainly the big ticket area. 10's of billions for fighters seems like a bitter pill to swallow. But we have a lot of territory North of 60, and the only way to exercise sovereignty over that territory is with air cover, and with icebreakers. The CF-18's are approaching the end of their service life, and Coast Guard and Naval vessels are soon to follow. I have a very difficult time with the argument that we should forego these acquisitions. (On the other hand, I am wildly opposed to the prison construction that is going to arise from the omnibus crime legislation, so I will recognize that the validity of the arguments is subjective).

All in all, Canada is run with a pretty steady hand on the fiscal tiller. The Liberals put CPP onto a sustainable funding basis and ratcheted down the size of the public service in the 90's and we enjoyed a solid decade of growth and surpluses as a result. The Conservatives inhereted the fiscal disaster created by the Americans and the Brits, but have, to be fair, been the only government in the G8 to reduce government spending as a percentage of GDP.

I think they have their priorities wrong, but I don't think that there is a vast amount of waste that you're going to be able to find after a decade of Treasury Board hard-line control of departmental spending. Just because government spends money on things that you don't agree with does not necessarily mean that the spending is wasteful.

A bit harsh maybe, but the intention is good.

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If only. Unfortunately, it generally takes longer to get anywhere on a bike than in a car. Also, you can't ride bikes on the freeway (not without getting caught, at least where I live).

I do walk when I have to go somewhere less than a mile or two away, though- but I don't think that does much in the way of sticking it to the oil companies.

Military aid to foreign nations who don't give two s**ts about us while people starve in the streets