Tariffs are paid by US businesses that wish to sell the imported product. In other words, the cost for products with foreign content is paid by US.
The Ron Paul Liberty Report
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Tariffs are Theft
Posted by M. C. on March 12, 2025
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The War Machine Is Always Hungry-Kyle Anzalone
Posted by M. C. on March 11, 2025
“The military industrial complex demands about $50 billion per year in war. As soon as we quit spending $50b per year in Afghanistan, we started spending $50b per year in Ukraine. Watch where the next $50b per year goes when we stop sending it to Ukraine. The MIC is always hungry.”
The Debrief – Libertarian Institute
| America’s best lawmaker, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, offered a key foreign policy insight rarely ever uttered by a US politician. Washington, he said, always keeps at least one war going in order to feed the sprawling Military-Industrial Complex – which stands to rake in vast sums of taxpayer money from deadly conflicts abroad. In a banger social media post on Monday morning, Massey wrote: “The military industrial complex demands about $50 billion per year in war. As soon as we quit spending $50b per year in Afghanistan, we started spending $50b per year in Ukraine. Watch where the next $50b per year goes when we stop sending it to Ukraine. The MIC is always hungry.” His observation is important. Sure, we can pressure the War Party to wind down an intervention every now and then; however, the White House is constantly agitating for the next one, keeping the war machine well fed. In the halls of power in Washington, virtually everyone calling to end US involvement in Ukraine or the Middle East is only doing so to allow the Pentagon to prepare for a coming war with China over Taiwan. We need real reform in the US foreign policy establishment, which must abandon all pretensions to Empire. It’s time to close the hundreds of overseas bases, bring the troops home, and stop squandering trillions of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars on disastrous foreign adventures. At the Institute we are dedicated to this mission. We see a bright future possible for America if we can break the hold the MIC has long had over our government. Help us make it a reality. |
In the News |
| • After Washington’s successful decade-long effort to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power in Damascus, Senator Lindsey Graham says the US-backed jihadists that now rule the country are causing more concern than ever. • Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that President Donald Trump’s proposal to remove all Palestinians from Gaza and build refugee cities in other Arab states is gradually coming together. |
Liberty Listening |
| • On Conflicts of Interest, I discuss the latest from Ukraine and the Middle East, including President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky to finally hold elections after a lengthy wartime hiatus. • Regular Institute contributor Bill Buppert delves into the murky world of private military contractors on the latest episode of WarNotes. |
Read more at the Institute |
| Can Putin Be Negotiated With? Yes In my latest op-ed, I argue that the war in Ukraine could’ve been ended through a negotiated settlement long ago. It’s not clear Washington truly wants that, however. “Before the invasion and in the early months of the war, Putin made serious offers to both Washington and Kiev to allow eastern and southern Ukraine to remain under Kiev’s control if the country agreed not to join NATO. The Joe Biden administration outright refused to negotiate on those terms, even if they were acceptable to Kiev. Preventing those talks from occurring first provoked the Russian invasion, then prevented it from ending within a few months.” |
| No Donald Trump, America Was Not ‘Always Free’ The great Jim Bovard pushes back on recent comments from Trump insisting the USA has always been a bastion of individual liberty, recounting a number of grave exceptions to that claim. “Americans are indoctrinated in government schools to presume that our national DNA practically guarantees we will always be free. But few follies are more perilous than presuming that individual rights are safe in perpetuity. None of the arguments on why liberty is inevitable can explain why it is becoming an endangered species. Presuming that freedom is our destiny lulls people against political predators. Sorting out the absurdities in Trump’s “always be free” assertion is like peeling a political onion.” |
| Stand with The Libertarian Institute Please consider supporting our work to keep this operation on its feet. |
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A Lone Voice of Principle in a Sea of Hypocrisy
Posted by M. C. on March 11, 2025
“It is the same Republican Party that weaponized debt concerns under Obama, only to balloon spending under Trump, Biden, and every administration before them. They do not fear big government; they fear accountability.
“Massie’s vote is a reminder that true liberty will never come from the two-party duopoly. He is carrying the spirit of Ron Paul and the founding principles of this country on his back while the GOP, the self-proclaimed “party of limited government,” turns against him.
From The Libertarian Party Newsletter
While Republicans campaign on promises of fiscal conservatism, Thomas Massie has once again proven he is one of the only members of Congress who truly means it. By standing firm and pledging to vote against the latest Continuing Resolution (CR), Massie refuses to play along with the never-ending expansion of government that both major parties enable.
Yet instead of being applauded, he is now under attack. Not just from Democrats, but from his own party and even Donald Trump himself.
Stand with us as we stand with Thomas Massie! >>>
This is the same Donald Trump whose supporters just celebrated mass audits of government waste, fraud, and abuse, yet now advocate for kicking the can down the road and continuing to fund that very corruption.
It is the same Republican Party that weaponized debt concerns under Obama, only to balloon spending under Trump, Biden, and every administration before them. They do not fear big government; they fear accountability.
Massie’s vote is a reminder that true liberty will never come from the two-party duopoly. He is carrying the spirit of Ron Paul and the founding principles of this country on his back while the GOP, the self-proclaimed “party of limited government,” turns against him.
Libertarians recognize this betrayal for what it is: a warning that the Republican Party will always cast aside its most principled members when they become inconvenient.
Support the Party of Principle today >>>
Massie is not just one Congressman; he represents every American who believes in real fiscal responsibility and the fight for limited government. When they attack him, they attack all of us.
The Libertarian Party stands in unwavering support of Massie’s commitment to principle. We will not back down, and we will not forget those who have exposed themselves as frauds.
To the Republicans who pretend to be the party of smaller government: If you have no place for Thomas Massie, then you have no place for liberty.
In Liberty,
Steven Nekhaila
Chairman, Libertarian National Committee
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Accountability, Audits, fraud, Government waste, Hypocrisy, Thomas Massie | Leave a Comment »
Why The Middle Class Exists
Posted by M. C. on March 11, 2025
Great summary! This is a lesson straight from an Austrian economics text book. It seems to me that the destruction of the US middle class is being offset by the rise in the Chinese middle class.
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Watching Another US-Enabled Atrocity Unfold-Kyle Anzalone
Posted by M. C. on March 10, 2025
In the coming weeks and months, it will be important to learn the history of the Syria War and Washington’s role – first and foremost its support of crazed al-Qaeda head-choppers, the “moderate rebels.”
But no one in Washington cares about Syrians, nor do their mouthpieces in the corporate press. If they are paying attention to the killing, it’s likely to prime Americans for yet another intervention.
The Libertarian Institute
Over the weekend, the jihadists that Washington and its Mideast partners installed in Damascus predictably began mass killing based on ethnicity.
Antiwar.com’s Jason Ditz broke down the deadly rampage:
“The fighting erupted Thursday, when the militias launched an organized attack on an HTS-run checkpoint near Jableh. It quickly escalated, and now the reported death tolls are enormous. The Associated Press is reporting over 600 killed, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) is saying over 1,000 deaths are believed to have happened. Currently, 125 militia fighters and 148 government forces loyal to the HTS have been confirmed killed, though those numbers are expected to rise, as the fighting continues across the region.
The majority of the deaths though, potentially the vast majority, are Alawite civilians, as HTS forces from the Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry have been carrying out revenge killings en masse in several locations. At least 745 civilians have been killed in summary executions over the past three days, though that number is expected to continue to rise as the incidents continue.”
It should come as no surprise that HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an umbrella group of jihadist militants led by Syria’s official al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra) is now killing massive numbers of Alawite civilians. Over a decade ago, the Syrian opposition adopted the slogan “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave.” Alawites are now filling mass graves.
As our director Scott Horton hates to say: “It didn’t have to be this way.”
Horton and many guests on the Scott Horton Show long warned that this would be the outcome of the CIA’s Timber Sycamore program. Under the Obama administration, CIA Director John Brennan sent hundreds of millions of dollars in arms to Syria’s extremist-led opposition fighting to oust Bashar al-Assad. At the same time, Turkey allowed jihadists – many of them veterans of the war against the US occupation in Iraq and the NATO regime change against Gaddafi in Libya – crossed the border into Syria to join the “civil war.”
The obvious result of the policy was that the opposition became dominated by Syrian al-Qaeda (the group led by Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, the current leader of post-Assad Syria), as well as the marginally more radical Islamic State.
While Trump finished crushing ISIS and ended Brennan’s treasonous support for al-Qaeda, he continued an economic war to strangle Assad. By not allowing Assad, along with his Russia and Iranian allies, to eradicate al-Qaeda, he permitted al-Jolani to remain in Syria.
Joe Biden – or whoever was running the White House during his administration – seems to have returned to Obama’s policy of backing the terrorists.
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What About the Price of Beef?
Posted by M. C. on March 10, 2025
Is there a magic wand to solve the problem of high beef prices, as well as high pork and chicken prices? Actually yes, begin by returning to the gold standard or at least don’t allow the Fed to target interest rates or increase the money supply. Remove the wild swings in the market and make investment more certain. The second day, release vast amounts of federally-controlled land and eliminate the ethanol program that diverts corn into our gasoline. Peace in Ukraine and the Middle East would unleash more food and fuel for the human population and this translates to improvements for the people directly impacted and to the general world population.
In September 2023, we looked at the high price of beef and how big government has been bad for the American family budget. With stock indexes even higher, the situation for beef consumers is even worse.
In the US, the price of hamburger meat ended last year near a record high of $5.60 per pound. Just 5 years earlier—prior to covid—it was $3.88 per pound. From the early 1980s to 2000, hamburger meat averaged $1.50 per pound. That means that over that 40+-year period, hamburger meat is four times as expensive.
While that seems like a big increase—and it is—the rate of increase is only slightly higher than what the government claims has been the increase in consumer prices in general over the entire period as measured by their Consumer Price Index or CPI. So, beef has been a fairly accurate barometer of the impact of government and Federal Reserve policies undermining the household economy. The most rapid increase in beef prices and consumer prices in general have come in the aftermath of the Trump-Biden covid spending sprees and, of course, the vast money printing by the Federal Reserve unleashed in 2020.
Like most businesses, raising cattle and related businesses have faced significant increases in costs due mostly to inflationary forces. Grains used to feed cattle are impacted by monetary inflation. There was a huge upward spike in grain prices from the Fed’s covid monetary inflation. Often blamed on Russia’s invasion of grain-producing Ukraine, grain prices actually peaked around the time of the invasion, leveled off, and even subsequently declined as the world economy contracted. Even though grain prices have retreated, herd size must have come under enormous pressure with the covid inflation as grain price surged, herd size retreated. Beef consumption also retreated in the post-GFC inflationary contraction.
With prices relatively high, and grain prices and herd sizes having retreated, beef producers are in a temporary sweet spot, but consumers and others along the supply chain, such as processors and wholesalers remain soured. It is a tough competitive business, subject to the cycles of uncertainty.
Another largely-unnoticed inflationary impact on beef supply and prices is the Fed monetary policy.
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Libertarian Party Response to President Trump’s Address
Posted by M. C. on March 5, 2025
The United States resembles a massive ship, its passengers, distracted by entertainment, outrage cycles, and partisan bickering, oblivious to the perilous course it is on. The bridge has been commandeered by individuals who are either incompetent, insane, or intentionally steering toward disaster. A few discerning voices attempt to alert the masses, pleading for action before it’s too late. Yet, convincing people to act before impact is the hardest part; most won’t care until the iceberg is tearing through the hull.
A government that can impose, restrict, and direct the economy at will is not a free government, it is a centralized command structure, no different in nature from the regimes we claim to oppose abroad.
That said, we do applaud the move to withdraw from the World Health Organization, a globalist bureaucratic entity that seeks to supersede American sovereignty, dictate pandemic response, control travel, and determine what constitutes disinformation. The WHO does not serve the American people; it serves its own interests and those of the governments that fund it.
A government that can impose, restrict, and direct the economy at will is not a free government, it is a centralized command structure, no different in nature from the regimes we claim to oppose abroad.
From the desk of LNC Chair Steven Nekhaila
President Trump’s recent address to Congress was a spectacle designed to project strength and success. However, beneath the surface of his grand declarations lies a troubling reality that libertarians cannot ignore.
The United States resembles a massive ship, its passengers, distracted by entertainment, outrage cycles, and partisan bickering, oblivious to the perilous course it is on. The bridge has been commandeered by individuals who are either incompetent, insane, or intentionally steering toward disaster. A few discerning voices attempt to alert the masses, pleading for action before it’s too late. Yet, convincing people to act before impact is the hardest part; most won’t care until the iceberg is tearing through the hull.
Trump boasts about signing nearly 100 executive orders in 43 days and taking over 400 executive actions, a record he proudly compares to the likes of George Washington. But libertarians don’t measure success by the number of decrees issued from the Oval Office. This is just another example of executive overreach, where laws are no longer written by Congress but dictated by a single individual.
Every administration expands its power, setting a dangerous precedent for the next. The solution is not finding the “right” president but dismantling the unchecked authority of the office itself. A government that can impose, restrict, and direct the economy at will is not a free government, it is a centralized command structure, no different in nature from the regimes we claim to oppose abroad.
That said, we do applaud the move to withdraw from the World Health Organization, a globalist bureaucratic entity that seeks to supersede American sovereignty, dictate pandemic response, control travel, and determine what constitutes disinformation. The WHO does not serve the American people; it serves its own interests and those of the governments that fund it.
The Libertarian National Committee has already passed a resolution urging the United States to withdraw, recognizing that decisions affecting Americans should be made by Americans, not unelected international bodies. This is one of the rare instances where an administration has taken a step in the right direction by reducing Washington’s entanglements, and we encourage more moves toward decentralization and the restoration of self-governance.
Trump frames his economic policy as a victory for national sovereignty, but his approach remains rooted in protectionism, particularly through new tariffs on foreign aluminum, copper, lumber, and steel. He claims these will restore American industry, but tariffs do not punish foreign nations, they punish American consumers by increasing prices and fueling inflation.
Protectionism does not create prosperity; it breeds inefficiency, raises the cost of living, and invites retaliatory tariffs that cripple American exports.
If the president is truly committed to economic growth, he would remove barriers to trade, eliminate corporate welfare, and stop Washington from dictating the marketplace. Instead, we get the same old mercantilist policies repackaged under a new banner, proving once again that both parties believe in government interference, they just argue over which industries should receive special treatment.
The creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Elon Musk, is presented as a bold step in eliminating waste. Yet Congress, which cheered this move, is the very entity that approved reckless spending in the first place, and continues to do so. If waste, fraud, and abuse are uncovered, the budget should be cut accordingly, not just redirected to new government pet projects.
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If DOGE is serious about accountability, it should start with the Pentagon, which has failed every audit and continues to funnel trillions into black budget programs without oversight. The military-industrial complex is the final boss of government waste, and it will not go down without a fight. Until politicians are willing to take on the untouchable defense contractors, all talk of fiscal responsibility is just another con.
The immigration crisis is another example of politicians refusing to address the root cause of a problem they helped create. Trump celebrates the lowest border crossings on record, attributing it to military deployment and increased enforcement, but like every administration before him, he ignores the fact that our legal immigration system is fundamentally broken. It is not just a problem of law enforcement, it is a problem of policy.
A good immigration system would remove perverse government incentives while streamlining legal pathways, ensuring that those who wish to contribute to America can do so without jumping through an impossible bureaucratic maze. Instead, politicians of both parties use immigration as a wedge issue, blaming enforcement or leniency while failing to reform the system itself.
The result? A nation that oscillates between border chaos and heavy-handed crackdowns, with no lasting solution in sight.
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Trump also takes credit for banning Critical Race Theory, reversing DEI mandates, and enforcing federal recognition of only two genders. While libertarians might agree that these policies should not be mandated, the federal government should not be wielding power over cultural battles at all.
The state should not be in the business of dictating social values, whether left-wing or right-wing. Cultural issues should be left to individuals, families, and communities to decide, not decreed by executive order. The same conservatives who decry Washington’s influence in their lives should be the first to recognize that government-mandated culture wars, no matter the side, are a dangerous road.
On the foreign policy front, we applaud attempts to end the war between Ukraine and Russia, which has brought the world to the brink of nuclear catastrophe while costing countless lives on both sides. However, peace will not be achieved by continuing Washington’s interventionist policies and military entanglements.
We encourage the withdrawal from NATO and other entangling alliances that serve only to drag the United States into conflicts that have nothing to do with our national security. A true “America First” policy is one of non-interventionism, not simply choosing which wars to fund.
We must end all military aid, including to Israel and Taiwan. They are more than welcome to purchase weapons from our private sector, but not a single tax dollar should be spent arming foreign nations while Americans struggle under the weight of inflation and debt.
Help us push a true America First, non-interventionist foreign policy >>>
We also find common ground in deregulation and reducing bureaucratic overreach. Trump pledged to eliminate ten regulations for every new one introduced, freeze federal hiring, and fire government employees who refuse to return to in-person work.
While we oppose rule by executive order, slashing the bureaucracy and ending Washington’s micromanagement of the economy is something libertarians have long championed. We also recognize that lifting restrictions on domestic energy production, while avoiding subsidies, allows for a free-market energy sector rather than one strangled by government mandates.
Trump ends his speech with a triumphant declaration: “The Golden Age of America has only just begun.” But no Golden Age has ever been built on endless government spending, protectionism, and executive overreach.
The real Golden Age of America was built by free individuals, entrepreneurs, and risk-takers, not by politicians and bureaucrats. If America is to reclaim its prosperity, it will not be through tariffs, executive orders, or grand government initiatives, it will come from getting government out of the way and allowing innovation, voluntary exchange, and personal responsibility to flourish.
Trump’s speech, like those before it, is a performance designed to pacify the public while government continues its reckless spending, overreach, and control. The real issue is not whether a Republican or Democrat stands at the podium, it is the size and power of the state itself.
No president will save us because the problem is the presidency, the bureaucracy, and the entire machine of centralized control. Libertarians stand for something different: a government that exists only to protect rights, not to dictate lives, if it is fit to exist at all.
America’s ship is headed for an iceberg, and the passengers are still dancing on the deck. If we wait for politicians to change course, we will sink. The answer is not a new captain, it is taking back the ship and restoring liberty before it is too late.
In Liberty,
Steven Nekhaila
Chairman, Libertarian National Committee
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Why the Bureaucracy Keeps Getting Bigger
Posted by M. C. on February 22, 2025
Hence, for example, the phenomenon of President Nixon, thinking he knew more than anyone else about the Vietnam War and yet actually knowing less than the astute reader of the New York Times. For the CIA and other intelligence warnings of what was going on, developed by many of the lower officers, were screened out by the higher-ups, for being contrary to the President’s preferred line, i.e., that all was going well.2
Contrast the hilariously satirical, but all too perceptive account of “Parkinson’s Law” of bureaucracy. Thus, Professor Parkinson asserted that, in a government bureaucracy, “there need be little or no relationship between the work to be done and the size of the staff to which it may be assigned.”3 The continuing rise in the total of government employees “would be much the same whether the volume of the work were to increase, diminish, or even disappear.”4 Parkinson identifies two “axiomatic” underlying forces responsible for this growth: (1) “An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals”; and (2) “Officials make work for each other.”
Mises Wire • Murray N. Rothbard
[This article is adapted from “Bureaucracy and the Civil Service in the United States.”]
Bureaucracy is necessarily hierarchical, first because of the Iron Law of Oligarchy, and secondly because bureaucracy grows by adding more subordinate layers. Since, lacking a market, there is no genuine test of “merit” in government’s service to consumers, in a rule-bound bureaucracy seniority is often blithely adopted as a proxy for merit. Increasing seniority, then, leads to promotion to higher ranks, while expanding budgets take the form of multiplying the levels of ranks under you, and expanding your income and power. Bureaucratic growth occurs, then, by multiplying levels of bureaucracy.
The theory of hierarchical government bureaucracy is that information is collected in the lowest ranks of the organization, and that at each successive higher rank, the manager culls the most important information from his subordinates, separates the wheat from the chaff, and passes the culled information higher up, so that, in the end, the President, for example, dealing with intelligence operations, receives a two-page memo distilling the most important information gathered and culled from hundreds of thousands of intelligence agents. The President, then, knows more than anyone else, say, about foreign affairs. One problem with this rosy model, as Professor Gordon Tullock points out in his illuminating book, The Politics of Bureaucracy,1 is that the model doesn’t ask whether or not each bureaucrat has the incentive to pass the best distillate of truth on to his superiors. The problem is that bureaucratic favor, especially at the higher levels, depends on pleasing one’s superiors, and pleasing them largely rests on telling the President and the higher bureaucrats what they want to hear. One of the great truths of human history is that one tends to shoot, or at least react badly, to the bearer of bad news. “Sire, your policy is working badly in Croatia,” is not the sort of message that the President, say, wants to hear from his envoy, and, while the outcome in Croatia remains in doubt, the President and his aides want to continue to believe that their policy is doing well. Hence, the dissident is set down as a trouble-maker if not a subversive, and his career in the hierarchy is side-tracked, often permanently. In the meanwhile, the envoys or foreign service people who assure the President “things are going very well in Croatia,” are hailed as perceptive fellows and their careers are advanced. And then, if years later, the dissident is proved correct, and the Croatian policy lies in shambles, is the president or any other ruler likely to turn in warm gratitude to the former dissident? Not hardly. Instead, he will still remember the dissident as a troublemaker, and he will not blame his aides, who, along with himself, have been proved wrong. For after all, didn’t the great mainstream of experts make the same error? How common is sincere soul-searching and repentance for past errors among Presidents or other rulers?
Those bureaucrats who are shrewd analysts of human nature, then, and who understand the way rulers operate, will, if they see that the cherished policy of their President is in grave error, tend to keep their mouths shut, and let some other sucker be the messenger of bad news and get shot down.
Every human activity and institution will tend to reward those who are most able to adapt to the best route to success in that activity. Successful market entrepreneurs will be those who can best anticipate, and satisfy, consumer demands. Success in the bureaucracy on the contrary, will go to those who are most apt at (a) employing propaganda to persuade their superiors, the legislators, or the public about their great merits; and therefore (b) at understanding that the way to rise is to tell the President and the top bureaucrats what they want to hear. Hence, the higher the ranks of the bureaucracy, the more yes-men and time-servers there will tend to be. The President will often know less about what is going on than those in the lower ranks.
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Trump Must Cut Millions of Tax-Funded “Private” Jobs
Posted by M. C. on February 22, 2025
In terms of overall outlays, the amount spent on government grants and contracts is larger than the 800 billion dollars spent on Medicare. Specifically, according to the GAO, the Federal government in 2023 spent 759 billion dollars on contracts in 2023. In addition to these contracts, we find that non-profits receive approximately 300 billion in governments grants. Much of that comes directly from federal grants, but much comes indirectly through the more than 750 billion dollars in federal grants-in-aid that goes first to state and local governments. Much of that is then passed on to NGOs.
This hasn’t stopped the Washington Post from portraying these de facto government workers as bona fide private sector workers. The Post insists on referring to government-funded “green energy” companies as “small businesses” as if they were entrepreneurial firms.
Three weeks ago, the Trump administration sent out an order to the executive branch calling for federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance” that could conflict with President Donald Trump’s agenda.
The order primarily targeted federal dollars doled out to so-called non-governmental organizations, often called “NGOs.”
The effect on many NGOs was immediate. Many started complaining that they would not be able to meet payroll or survive without a constant inflow of government largesse. Thus, in recent weeks, one hears repeatedly of layoffs of taxpayer-funded employees as thousands of ostensibly non-governmental organizations find themselves cut off from their main source of income: the taxpayer gravy train.
In this, these NGOs are no different from any other recipient of government money which claims to be private, but is decidedly not private in the economic sense. These organizations, whether “charitable” non-profits or for-profit weapons makers, only exist as they do because they feed off the taxpayer-funded government trough.
Fortunately, this is becoming better known. The controversy over the layoffs at these NGOs—and the related media coverage—has helped to highlight just how immense is this taxpayer funded network of private-in-name-only organizations that do the federal government’s bidding.
Indeed, in America today there are now more federal contract and grant-funded workers than there are employees on the official federal payroll. If the Trump administration wants to be serious about truly reducing the rolls of the millions of federal employees, he’s going to also have to target the even larger number of “private” employees whose salaries are nonetheless paid by the taxpayers.
How Much Taxpayer Money Goes to “Private” Government Contractors and Grantees?
There are approximately three million non-military federal employees, counting the postal service. (There are over a million active-duty federal employees in the military.) On the other hand, there are more than five million contract workers, and another 1.8 to two million grant workers. (That was back in 2020.) A separate, more recent report shows that more than 7.5 million workers were federally funded by contracts and grants in 2023. In other words, these contract and grant workers far outnumber the “regular” federal workers. As shown by the Project on Government Oversight in 2017, “contractors have long been the single largest segment of Uncle Sam’s ‘blended workforce,’ accounting for between 30 and 42 percent of that workforce since the 1980s.”
(In millions of employees.) Source.
In terms of overall outlays, the amount spent on government grants and contracts is larger than the 800 billion dollars spent on Medicare.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: GAO, green energy, NGO, Tax-Funded, USAID | Leave a Comment »
Federal Employees Are Getting Real World Treatment … And They Hate It!
Posted by M. C. on February 19, 2025
Government is the problem, it is not the real world, going to work for the problem is not helping.
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