A few weeks ago, I boarded an airplane for the first time in a number of years. Since I am not a frequent flyer, some things that jumped out at me that likely didn’t seem unusual to the more seasoned travelers around me. Last week, I flew home from a family vacation to make it back in time for summer school classes. Again I noticed a few things that shocked me.
The first thing I noticed was the amount of time it took to go through security checkpoints. When I was in the back of the line, I assumed the holdup was due to the number of passengers. As I neared the front I realized that was not the case. The line was moving slowly because more than half of the TSA employees were standing around not working. At the Memphis airport, this equated to about 25 uniform-clad individuals. At the Charlotte airport there were an additional 10.
This piqued my interest, so once I was through security and waiting at the proper gate, I looked up some information on TSA employees. There I found that the average employee earns around $45,000 a year plus federal benefits and retirement. I could not believe that I had been seeing government waste before my very eyes.
This situation is not unique, I’m afraid. Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn pointed out a number of similar examples in a recent letter to Speaker John Boehner, including tax-funded courses for Senate staffers on small talk, forgiveness and eating healthy.
Additionally, the IRS has reportedly spent over $50 million from 2010 to 2012 on conferences for employees, including a number of presidential suites at one conference for $3500 a night, according to a Treasury Department report released Tuesday.
Meanwhile, our esteemed congressmen feel that programs such as the Military Tuition Assistance Program should be subject to sequester cuts. This is a slap in the face to some of the only men and women in this country who have truly earned such assistance, especially considering the examples of waste above.
I cannot help but shake my head at the politicians who claim that higher taxes are necessary at this point in time. Instead of focusing on ways to make the rich pay more, they should be focusing on cutting out and preventing frivolous spending.
If a man squanders $1000, what makes you think he would do better with $2000?
It is time that politicians wake up and realize that taxpayers do not exist to fund the government. Rather, the government exists to serve the taxpayers. Once this truth is finally acknowledged by the federal government America can begin to truly move forward.
Trenton Winford is a public policy leadership major from Madison.
