Weekly Wastebasket

Executive Orders are easy, the real work happens in Congress

Jan 17, 2025|

Report

Achieving Fiscal Responsibility & Improving U.S. Department of Agriculture Programs

Dec 4, 2024|

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Taxpayers for Common Sense

Protecting taxpayers from government waste since 1995.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Clearly near-term, we’ve got to provide the financial support to these communities so that they can rebuild and rebuild their lives, rebuild their houses and rebuild their communities, but in the longer term, if we just do that, we will still have failed because this is going to keep happening. And if we don’t look at it from what I like to call a systems-architect perspective, looking at the whole problem, we’re not serving our country.”

— Rep. George Whitesides (D-CA), on the need to improve disaster response and enable communities to become more resilient to natural disasters.

Agriculture

Agriculture

Washington wastes billions of taxpayer dollars annually on inefficient and outdated agriculture policies that do not address the realities of 21st-century agriculture, modern economies, or our nation’s current financial challenges.

Budget & Tax

Budget & Tax

Budget, tax, and spending decisions are about more than numbers, they are reflections of our priorities.

Disaster & Climate

Disaster & Climate

Federal disaster policy should prioritize proactive investments in resilience, transparency in spending, and cost-effective climate solutions to reduce taxpayer burdens, address vulnerabilities, and prepare communities for future disasters.

Energy & Natural Resources

Energy & Natural Resources

We work to bring transparency to federal land and asset management, and to push Congress and Administrations to establish rents, royalties, and fees for private development of public land so taxpayers receive a fair return.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure

Taxpayers for Common Sense opposes projects where the national benefit doesn’t outweigh the cost and advocates for a fix-it-first approach. We work to shift more of the financial costs and risks off federal taxpayers and onto the actual project beneficiaries themselves.

National Security

National Security

We monitor presidential, agency, and congressional spending requests, looking for duplications, over budget and unaffordable weapons systems, and projects driven by parochial or industry concerns rather than by sound security strategy.