The Pig Book: How Government Wastes Your Money [Paperback]

Citizens Against Government Waste (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0312343574 | ISBN-13: 978-0312343576 | Publication Date: March 10, 2005 | Edition: First Edition

The federal government wastes your tax dollars worse than a drunken sailor on shore leave. The 1984 Grace Commission uncovered that the Department of Defense spent $640 for a toilet seat and $436 for a hammer. Twenty years later things weren't much better. In 2004, Congress spent a record-breaking $22.9 billion dollars of your money on 10,656 of their pork-barrel projects. The war on terror has a lot to do with the record $413 billion in deficit spending, but it's also the result of pork over the last 18 years the likes of:

- $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa
- $102 million to study screwworms which were long ago eradicated from American soil
- $273,000 to combat goth culture in Missouri
- $2.2 million to renovate the North Pole (Lucky for Santa!)
- $50,000 for a tattoo removal program in California
- $1 million for ornamental fish research

Funny in some instances and jaw-droppingly stupid and wasteful in others, The Pig Book proves one thing about Capitol Hill: pork is king!

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I believe that this book should be read by every citizen in America...What is being done here by CAGW, in my view, is of the greatest importance."
- Senator John McCain

About the Author

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is a private, non-partisan, nonprofit organization whose mission is to eliminate waste, mismanagement, and inefficiency in federal government. Founded in 1984 by the late industrialist J. Peter Grace and syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, CAGW produces numerous publications including their official newspaper Government WasteWatch and the annual Congressional Pig Book out of which this book grew. They are based in Washington, D.C.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; First Edition edition (March 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312343574
• ISBN-13: 978-0312343576
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #572,980 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Congress Wastes Too Much of Our Money, March 21, 2005

By 

Albert Hall "Al" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pig Book: How Government Wastes Your Money (Paperback)

The Pig Book is the best compilation of pork-barrel spending that I have ever seen. The book is enjoyable to read, and provides some outrageous examples of what Congress is doing with our money. It takes a serious subject and makes it understandable to everyone. Citizens Against Government Waste deserves a lot of credit for taking on the big spenders in Washington. I agree with Sen. John McCain that this book should be read by everyone in America!

1.0 out of 5 stars The Book is a Pure Waste, January 22, 2011

By 

K. Willington - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pig Book: How Government Wastes Your Money (Paperback)

I read part of the book and seems to me the ones who wrote it had no idea what they are talking about. For example, it is naive to believe that we keep the screwworm erradicated from the U.S magically. There is a lot of work involved in this mission and they have no idea. The money spent in Screwworm program save the economy 100s of millions per year and keep our animals and enven humans free of this terrible infestation of larvae best known as man eater. To keep the US free of screwworm, 40 millions sterile flies per week must be produced in a factory and release it to the environemnt by plane. This is a complex operations and any research done to minimize the cost of these operations is worth it. If we do not produce sterile flies they will fly to the united states soon and invade the country again. Because what they are saying about screwworm is Naive...(ask livestock producers in Texas) everything else is probably naive. It is too bad that people make money writting this books that probably have no sense of reality.

3.0 out of 5 stars Not at all comprehensive, but an interesting overview nonetheless., February 7, 2009

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Pig Book: How Government Wastes Your Money (Paperback)

Citizens Against Government Waste, The Pig Book: How Government Wastes Your Money (St. Martin's, 2005)

Another book designed to raise your blood pressure while educating you, though it must be noted up front that anyone who reads this will probably wonder how some of these things are wastes of money. CAGW are, as long as it's not a major project (for some reason, they completely fail to note HIPAA, the single largest governmental waste of money ever conceived), equal-opportunity destroyers. That said, on the other side of the equation, you're certain to find millions upon millions of dollars that will make you wonder what on Earth Congress was thinking. After all, it doesn't take just one idiot to get the government to invest millions of dollars into projects that are, at best, useless redundancies. People have to vote on this stuff, y'know?

I'll admit that my number one complaint about this book has little to do with the book itself. I get annoyed at the kind of forced anonymity thing implied by an "author" named Citizens Against Government Waste. And far from the note at the end telling you who the editors of the book actually were mollifying me, it just seemed to make it all the more irritating. You guys put it together? For god's sake, take the credit. It's not like you were going for anonymity if you put your names in the back of the book, right? And it does still nag that CAGW were unwilling to attack HIPAA, which in its first year alone wasted more money than all the projects in this book put together, while attacking such relatively harmless projects as the Steamtown Museum (one wonders how a project that was widely considered "a godsend" to the local economy--a characterization which the book's editors do not at all dispute--is a horrible thing. Though, yeah, it would have been nice had Pennsylvania paid the money back eventually...). But other than those niggles, worth it. *** ½