Hardworking Americans face rising prices and a weaponized federal government, yet more than 1,500 federal programs are still receiving billions in taxpayer dollars despite their legal authorizations expiring years or even decades ago.
A federal program is separately authorized and funded by Congress. If a program is not authorized, or authorized at a specific level, it is not supposed to receive funding. But because of Congressional inaction, apathy, and inattention, these programs regularly receive such funding even though they lack legal authorization.
491 specifically-identified unauthorized programs and federal spending accounts for roughly 8% of the annual federal budget of $6.45 trillion, or $516 billion dollars. The DOGE effort to cut government fraud, waste, and abuse has so far saved taxpayers $140 billion by comparison.
The Congressional Budget Office couldn’t find or estimate the dollar amounts spent by the other 1,000 zombie programs they identified.
The deeper Elon Musk investigates, the lower our taxes get.