January 20, 2025

Political types of all stripes love to condemn government waste, fraud, and abuse. That’s easy – who opposes it?
The problem is when you get specific. Someone argues this agency or that program should be cut, and disagreement ensues. It’s not always genuine though; sometimes it’s selfish. See, one man’s waste is another man’s revenue.
Waste is when the government spends but gets nothing for it. Fraud involves deception for improper benefits. And abuse is the selfish use of legitimate access.
Ending this is tough because the government is inefficient by design. We rely it on to deliver crucial, unprofitable services. So, some waste is probably inevitable, though we would all probably benefit from efforts to reduce it.
Here are some of the military’s hundreds of “above budget amount requests,” (ABR) or spending above the amount requested in the President’s budget:

None of this was requested by the military agencies. Perhaps it’s so a military contractor in some Congress person’s district could save some jobs.
Some other ABR spending:

Things get even worse when you move to the “no budget request” (NBR) category. This is when Congress forces money on agencies that don’t want it.

What are these? I don’t know. But we can surmise they aren’t accidents. House and Senate members asked for these items, often anonymously to keep them off the record.