The Daily Hatch

Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 165)

Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:

Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

On May 11, 2011,  I emailed to this above address and I got this email back from Senator Pryor’s office:

Please note, this is not a monitored email account. Due to the sheer volume of correspondence I receive, I ask that constituents please contact me via my website with any responses or additional concerns. If you would like a specific reply to your message, please visit http://pryor.senate.gov/contact. This system ensures that I will continue to keep Arkansas First by allowing me to better organize the thousands of emails I get from Arkansans each week and ensuring that I have all the information I need to respond to your particular communication in timely manner.  I appreciate you writing. I always welcome your input and suggestions. Please do not hesitate to contact me on any issue of concern to you in the future.

I just did. I went to the Senator’s website and sent this below:

Here are some great suggestions from the Heritage Foundation.  Alison Acosta Fraser Director, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies

Nowhere to Cut?

• A grant totaling $25,000 was used to transcribe a Maldivian love ballad.
• Taxpayers funded a National Institutes of Health study costing $55,382 in 2011, and $170,000 over three years, to study the hookah smoking habits of Jordanian university students.
• The Department of Agriculture’s Market Access Program spends $200 million a year to help U.S. agricultural trade associations and cooperatives advertise their products in foreign markets. In 2011, it funded a reality TV show in India that advertised U.S. cotton.
• The Environmental Protection Agency awarded a $141,450 grant under the Clean Air Act to fund a Chinese study on swine manure and a $1.2 million grant to the United Nations for clean fuel promotion.
• The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that some people are double-dipping from unemployment and disability benefits programs. This lack of coordination among government agencies is costing taxpayers $850 million annually. GAO found one individual who drew $62,000 from unemployment insurance and disability insurance at the same time she was working and earning an additional $7,000 in income.
• In 2011, the top 20 percent of farm subsidy recipients received almost 80 percent of all premium subsidies. Twenty-six farm businesses each collected over $1 million worth of subsidies.
• Taxpayer losses from the failed solar cell manufacturing company Solyndra, which received a federal loan guarantee, totaled $528 million. Beacon Power and Abound Solar, two other failed alternative energy companies, cost taxpayers $46.5 million and $73.1 million, respectively.
• A Congressional Research Service report revealed that among individuals earning $1 million or more, 2,840 received unemployment benefits in 2008 and 2,362 received the benefits in 2009.
• The Conservation Reserve Program pays farmers $2.1 billion annually not to farm their land for a period of at least ten years.

Sources include Congressional Budget Office and Government Accountability Office reports, Wastebook 2011 from the Office of Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), and news articles from various media outlets, all of which are on file at The Heritage Foundation.