After 32 consecutive victories on the TV game show “Jeopardy,” James Holzhauer, a professional sports gambler from Las Vegas, Nevada, saw his incredible winning streak come to an end. Finishing with $2,462,216 in total prize money, James fell just $58,484 short of the all-time record set by Ken Jennings in 2004 (it took Jennings 74 […]
On the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court decision to legalize sports betting, the Hawkeye State has delivered another exciting reason to celebrate. Yesterday, Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-Iowa) signed SF 617 into law, making Iowa the ninth state to fully legalize sports gambling. In comparison to other proposals weighed by the legislature, this law provides […]
For the first time since 2015, the U.S. Export-Import Bank can approve deals of more than $10 million, because the Senate confirmed three new members of its board of directors, giving the bank a required quorum needed to approve larger deals. Senators confirmed Kimberly Reed as bank president along with Judith DelZoppo Pryor and former Rep. Spencer […]
Healthcare, Budget, Postal Service
The national debt stands at more than $22 trillion, with trillion-dollar deficits right around the corner. Entitlement spending continues to rise and is projected to make up 60 percent of spending for Fiscal Year (FY) 2020. Social Security will exceed its income in 2020 for the first time since 1982 and Medicare is set to […]
The Senate is considering another poorly designed disaster aid package. With a price tag of $13.5 billion, the Senate intends to use the bill’s disaster and emergency spending designation as a way to circumvent the spending caps put in place by the Budget Control Act of 2011. The bill will boost funding for programs that […]
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) presents its 2019 Pork-Barrel Madness bracket in honor of the NCAA tournament. The bracket features 32 of the worst pork-barrel earmarks of all time. Taxpayers will be able to vote on CAGW’s Twitter account @GovWaste. Voting on the first-round matchups begins on March 11 and the torunament will end on April 1.
On January 28, 2019, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its annual Budget and Economic Outlook for 2019 to 2029 and unsurprisingly, the United States’ fiscal outlook remains dreadful. CBO estimates a 2019 deficit of $897 billion, a $118 billion increase from 2018. Trillion-dollar deficits will resume in 2022 and reach all-time highs by the end of […]
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (OIG) admitted last week that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) hospital payment process is broken. The OIG’s report, “Significant Vulnerabilities Exist in the Hospital Wage Index System for Medicare Payments,” showed that from 2004 to 2017, CMS overpaid nearly […]
Citizens Against Government Waste has previously covered the idea of creating a sixth military branch. The argument in favor of a Space Force is almost entirely without merit. It will increase bureaucracy, add to overhead costs, and complicate existing command structures, all without providing additional capabilities. For these very reasons, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was […]
