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Dear Friend –
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Billion Dollar Boondoggles Abound
Air Force One is an iconic symbol of American power, but the legendary Boeing 747 is in danger of becoming an emblem of the bygone, budget-busting Biden era.
The current presidential planes are thirty years old and the replacements for the aging aircraft that take turns transporting the president are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.
President Trump protected taxpayers from getting stuck with the bill for the $1.6 billion in cost overruns by insisting on a fixed-priced contract. The cost-conscious commander-in-chief is threatening to take additional actions if the planes don’t get off the ground soon.
 President Trump protected taxpayers from getting stuck with the sky-high cost increases for the new Air Force One planes.
Similarly, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is investigating the high cost of California’s high-speed rail project. I’ve been calling for this gravy train to be brought to a squealing halt for six years because it’s taking taxpayers for a ride, without ever leaving the station.
It’s been a decade since the railroad’s groundbreaking, and construction is costing about $1.8 million a day, yet no tracks have even been laid. Completion was delayed from 2020 to 2033, but even that date is looking “increasingly unlikely.” By comparison, it took just six years to complete the Transcontinental Railroad.
The project’s price tag has tripled from $33 billion in 2008 to as much as $128 billion today. Folks, going nearly $100 billion over budget isn’t a rounding error, it’s a financial train wreck!
More than $4 billion remains unspent of the $6.8 billion D.C. provided to the project, but applications are pending for another $216.6 million. This train is off the rails and needs to be stopped before it choo choo chews up any more tax dollars.
 A decade after the groundbreaking of California’s 800-mile high speed rail, the state just recently celebrated the completion of one of its first structures, this 1,600 foot-long bridge.
Washington can’t seem to ever make the trains run on time. [Here's a whole list of runaway trains.]
And bureaucrats always find a way to pay a whole lot more for planes, trains, and automobiles—and just about everything else.
For example, the Biden administration announced plans in 2022 to spend nearly $10 billion to purchase tens of thousands of Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDVs) for the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) by 2028. While the initial order for 50,000 trucks was placed three years ago, fewer than 100 trucks have been delivered.
The manufacturer claims, “every day we strive to meet or exceed our customers’ needs,” yet it is only making one truck per day for the postal service. The company did not even “produce a drivable prototype until months after the contract was awarded.” When the first vehicles were finally delivered, significant fixes were required before they were useable.
Despite the delays, USPS agreed to pay higher prices for the vehicles. The cost increase is ironic since $3 billion was provided for the purchase as part of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. The Postal Service refuses to provide details about the value of the current contract.
A person involved with the production admits, “this is the bottom line: We don’t know how to make a damn truck.” This order needs to be canceled with the unspent money marked “return to sender,” the taxpayers.
 Biden spent billions of dollars buying vehicles for the postal service that won’t be delivered on time because the company he hired doesn’t “know how to make a damn truck.”
Poor planning like this is responsible for sinking a lot of money into boats, as well.
Both the Navy and Coast Guard begin building ships before designs are even finished, increasing costs and delaying completion by years. By the time some are completed, they are already outdated.
Designs were still being worked on a year after construction started on the Navy’s new frigate, which is three years behind schedule as a result. Despite not being in shipshape, the Navy went overboard and issued contracts to build two more of the frigates!
Likewise, the Coast Guard’s Offshore Patrol Cutters are currently delayed by almost four years and are nearly $11 billion over budget. Its Polar Security Cutters are five years behind schedule and more than $2 billion over budget.
Righting the ship requires proper planning before shipping off billions of dollars by the boatload, and that includes spaceships.
President George W. Bush pledged to return American astronauts to the moon by the year 2020 and NASA has spent more than $90 billion trying to get there. While costs took off, the rocket ship has not. By 2023, the mission was already $6 billion over budget and years behind schedule as a result of mismanagement by NASA and “poor performance” by contractors. Despite the less-than-stellar performance, NASA still paid hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to its contractors. While taxpayers were promised the moon, NASA has launched a moondoggle.
These boondoggles are breaking the bank… literally.
In fact, the contractors renovating the Federal Reserve Bank must be laughing all the way to the bank. The cost to refurbish the headquarters of the nation’s central bank, which is tasked with controlling inflation, ironically increased 34 percent from $1.9 billion in 2019 to nearly $2.5 billion. Talk about robbing the bank! The spending is not approved by Congress and is financed with interest earned off the Fed’s management of the nation’s money supply. And the Fed is managing the nation’s money about as well as its headquarters makeover, with the bank operating at a loss since 2022. It’s time to audit the Fed and its renovation.
 The Federal Reserve’s billion-dollar renovation is breaking the bank.
The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is working overtime trying to end wasteful and unnecessary spending. With all the actions taken in the past month, DOGE estimates $65 billion has been saved. That’s a lot of money folks, but our national debt now tops $36 trillion. We can’t afford to waste another penny.
That is why I am giving my February 2025 Squeal Award to the bureaucrats bankrolling billion-dollar boondoggles who are unbothered by the ballooning bottom line.
I’m calling on Congress to immediately pass my bipartisan Billion Dollar Boondoggle bill to make public every federally funded project that is $1 billion or more over budget or five years or more behind schedule.
Let’s put the brakes on boondoggles and bring them to a squealing halt!
Squeal Award: Bureaucrats Bankrolling Billion-Dollar Boondoggles
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