The Congressional Pig Book is CAGW's annual compilation of the pork-barrel projects in the federal budget. A "pork" project is a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures. To qualify as pork, a project must meet one of seven criteria that were developed in 1991 by CAGW and the Congressional Porkbusters Coalition.
Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) named Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen our April 2023 Porker of the Month for declaring that President Biden’s “budget will deliver deficit reduction.”
Secretary Yellen claimed the budget “builds on economic progress” and makes “smart, fiscally sound investments.” But President Biden’s $6.9 trillion budget for fiscal year 2024 would increase the debt by 77 percent in 10 years from $24.6 trillion to $43.6 trillion and destroy the U.S. economy. Yet Secretary Yellen claimed that “fiscal discipline remains a central priority in our budget.” Since President Biden named Yellen as his Treasury secretary, spending has skyrocketed, and fiscal discipline has been nonexistent. She even admitted that President Biden’s $1.9 trillion “rescue plan” added to inflation. Throughout her tenure, Secretary Yellen has been leading the way inside the administration to waste the taxpayers’ money, leading to her being named CAGW’s Porker of the Month in both October 2021 and today.
On behalf of the more than one million members and supporters of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), I respectfully submit these comments to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in response to its March 23, 2023, solicitation for comments regarding its “initial guidance for implementation of the Negotiation Program for initial price applicability year 2026.”
The CMS guidance is being provided following the enactment of Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was signed into law on August 16, 2022. As CAGW wrote, the Medicare drug negotiation provisions create price controls that will dramatically undermine drug research and development and leave “an invisible graveyard of patients.” Government price-setting will neither improve access to care nor lower patient costs. And giving the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) the authority to set prices at the maximum fair price (MFP) is not a negotiation, it is a mandate.
The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) is expanding the multi-media advertising campaign that was launched on March 31, 2023, opposing HB 1547 and SB 262, which would impose unprecedented, heavy-handed regulations on digital advertising. The positive response from taxpayers and consumers to the first phase of the ad campaign, and the need to stop the most onerous restrictions of any state on how businesses can conduct online and digital marketing to their customers, were critical to CCAGW’s decision.
Citizens Against Government Waste is the nation's largest taxpayer watchdog group with more than one million members and supporters nationwide. It is a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government. Contributions to CAGW are tax-deductible as charitable contributions to the extent permitted by law. For more information about CAGW, visit our website at www.cagw.org. To help CAGW battle the runaway deficit spending that is bankrupting America, make a tax-deductible contribution to CAGW today.
