Politicians love to brag about how they are trying to cut government spending in order to eliminate the debt and save the nation’s economy. In fact, as Politico pointed out on June 8, 2011, many freshmen GOP members ran campaigns and won their elections on that very premise. However, as the article also pointed out, it appears that some of them changed gears rather quickly and became sucked into the Washington, D.C. way of doing business. "They rode into Washington on an anti-spending wave, but some House Republican freshmen are already enjoying one of the perks of incumbency, spending their office budgets on everything from $1,000-a-month car leases to pricey online advertising contracts.At least 15 GOP freshmen have shelled out tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money on mass communication — or franking — designed to boost their exposure back home, even as they call for budget cuts and pared-back government spending, according to quarterly disbursement reports released by the House."

Since the economic downturn, the focus of all politicians has been the loss of jobs in the economy and the need to bring down the unemployment rate. Supporters of the 2009 Stimulus Bill claimed that the legislation would reduce unemployment and get the country back on the right fiscal track. Unemployment spiked after the legislation was passed and after about 2 months of decreasing unemployment, the May 2011 unemployment numbers, which were released on June 3, 2011, showed some bad news with unemployment creeping back up to 9.1 percent. Seeing the continued failure of the stimulus bill House Freshmen want spending cuts to get the economy back on track. According to a June 6, 2011 article in The Hill “Democrats argue the stimulus passed in 2009 was too small and that unemployment would have risen to 11 percent without it. But the new GOP House members said Democrats who are demanding another round of stimulus are delusional and that only fiscal restraint and curtailing burdensome regulations will fix the country’s economic mess.“

At this point one would think that the federal government has found every conceivable way to waste money. But, a new report by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.),“The National Science Foundation: Under the Microscope”, which details how the national Science Foundation (NSF) squanders billions of dollars on silly research projects and mismanagement, shows the federal government’s never ending creativity in wasting tax dollars.The good news is that with major news networks like Fox picking up on the story,the NSF may be forced to address the problems. The NSF was established in 1950 to “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…” They carry out their mission by giving grants to “support scientists, engineers and educators directly through their own home institutions (typically universities and colleges. Researchers and academics have held the NSF in high esteem for its peer review process and ground breaking research into areas such as cloud computing and nanotechnology. That reputation may begin to change.

Budgeting in Washington D.C. is neither pretty, or at times, easy to understand. Life-cycle budgeting is a lesser known budgeting term that more people should know about. It basically means that governments must consider the full life cycle cost of any investment it makes. Those costs don’t stop at just the cost to build, but also the cost to maintain and operate that project decades into the future.