Government Parties While Social Security Burns

While the Obama administration scrambles to explain why taxpayer dollars were wasted on lavish Las Vegas parties with clowns and mind-readers, the government has a new fire to fight: Social Security running out of money faster than ever before.

According to the annual report of the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, Social Security – which 45 million Americans depend upon – will be insolvent 3 years earlier than the government projected just last year. That means the wildly overspending Obama administration has knocked 3 years off the life expectancy of Social Security in just 1 year.

Social Security does not provide security.  It provides looming insecurity for Americans.

Where did all the money go? Certainly not to America’s seniors who depend on Social Security. And not to the more than 10 million disabled Americans who depend on disability benefits. Their benefits are now projected to run out of money in just 4 years.

No money for seniors, no money for the disabled, and certainly no money for today’s workers and their children, who have long-since given up hope that Social Security will be there for them when they retire.

But the Obama administration did manage to find $120 million last year to pay the retirement and disability benefits – of dead former federal employees.

That’s right.  The same government that can’t find the money to pay retirement benefits for living American citizens, has no problem finding money to pay their own people, long after they’re dead. According to a September 2011 report from Inspector General for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, “the amount of post-death improper payments is consistently $100-$150 million annually.”

This is part of a larger pattern of government waste, overspending and arrogance.  While the Obama administration fiddles and parties, Social Security burns.

But the government does manage to find money for other priorities; like Pakistani mango farmers. The same country that hid Osama bin Laden for 10 years got $30 million in US taxpayer dollars to help Pakistani mango farmers. And $10 million dollars to create a Pakistani version of Sesame Street. Indonesia benefited from $100,000 in US taxpayer dollars to fund an Indonesian celebrity chef show. And in the past 2 years, the Obama administration presided over $356,933 in US taxpayer dollars being spent to test the effects of cocaine on the sex drive of birds.

That is not a typo. Your taxpayer dollars were spent to score cocaine, and then push it on birds.

And, of course, there is the now-infamous GSA scandal, which saw $823,000 taxpayer dollars wasted on a lavish Las Vegas party for government workers.  They spent $7,000 of your money on sushi, $6,300 on “commemorative coin sets,” $75,000 to learn how to build a bicycle – and they even spent your money entertaining themselves with a clown and a mind-reader.

It doesn’t take a mind-reader to know that a government that throws lavish parties for itself, while Social Security burns down and disability payments dry up, is a government that is out of touch with the American people.

Jenny Beth Martin is co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest tea party organization with more than 3,500 affiliated local groups.  Caleb Yee is founder and president of A-Team High School Tea Party Youth.