Wasteful spending must be stopped

Conservatives talk about addressing waste and fraud in federal spending while liberals talk about raising more taxes to provide additional money for federal spending. Here's what conservatives are talking about.

The federal government paid for at least 203 funerals in Florida last year that were reported to have resulted from Hurricane Frances. Problem is, not one of those deaths was in any way related to the hurricane.

Among the costly funerals were a millionaire recovering from heart surgery who died two days before Hurricane Frances and another man who died from cirrhosis and heart failure five months after Hurricane Charley.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency approved 319 funeral claims totaling $1.3 million. But most of those died from natural causes, suicides or accidents unrelated to the storms.

For starters, it's a sad commentary that people would file false claims for funeral expenses. That says much of their character. But for the federal government to be so lax as to approve these costly funerals without some evidence that they were hurricane related says much, too.

Actually, FEMA paid for three times more funerals than deaths reported from the hurricanes. And there remain 33 more deaths awaiting claim approval.

But that's not the only problem facing FEMA relating to the hurricanes. A government committee found widespread waste in the $31 million that FEMA gave residents of Miami-Dade County, who experienced no hurricane.

And so I return to my initial statement. Conservatives would want to know why FEMA - or any other federal agency - is wasting taxpayer money. Liberals would request more tax money to cover the expenses.

FEMA is far from alone. But they are just the latest example of how an unending supply of tax dollars can be wasted by your government. And that's why conservatives say no to taxes and yes to controlling wasteful spending.