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Machiavellian said:
BFR said:

Couldn't the CDC have spent that 240k on something more important than blowing it on 30 picnic tables? If not, why not return, at least some of it, to the taxpayers? 

I'm not saying they didn't need 30 picnic tables, I'm saying they didn't need to buy $8000 ones. Yes, I understand they have a budget, and they could afford these tables, but this is just one tiny example of wasteful government spending. How many more examples of gov't waster are there?

How many budgets at every gov't agency consists of wasteful spending, year after year?

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Also, I'm tired of the "waffling" that has been going on in this thread.

Again, you just do not understand how budgets work and your lack of understanding is why we keep circling this topic.  A budget is a budget, have you never made a budget for yourself.  My wife and I do it for every month and for the entire year.  We know how much money we bring in, we know all of our expenses and we budget for family events we know we need to save for.  Then there is personal budget, we put money into where each of us spend that money on whatever we like.  Meaning I do not care how she spends her personal budget and she doesn't care how I spend mine.  All of the money is budgeted to go somewhere.

For a company or federal agency its pretty much the same thing.  All of the money they are budgeted for is allocated for something but there is also allocation within the budget for things like Christmas parties, trips and so forth.  You call it wasteful spending because you have no clue the money allocated for these personal events which funded the tables.  The thing is, if it was within budget, then they had the money to pay for it.  While it may not be what YOU would spend it for, you do not work for the CDC so you have no clue if that is something the employees decided they wanted.  Either way, if they did it within budget then it wasn't wasteful.

And Yes, every agency just like every company usually have discretionary accounts.  Funny enough, I am sure if we looked at the discretionary accounts for congress it probably would blow you mind.  I hope we see how much this DODGE employees will be paid for their work since we already have an agency doing the job.  That in itself could be considered wasteful money.  Paying a company to do the exact same job as one we already have a budget for whose is made up of people who have no clue how the government works.

Do you agree that budgets, at any level, can be "excessive?" ...and if they are, isn't that a bad thing?