The Texas Freedom Caucus launched the Texas Accountability Project today with the goal of eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse from the state budget. The project will consist of researching areas of the state budget, along with the individual entities that are funded by the state, and compiling reports of waste submitted by individual Texans, who can report abuse on the project’s website, www.TexasAccountability.org. The project will issue a report dubbed the “Texas Wastebook” toward the start of the 2021 legislature session compiling the most egregious examples of government waste.
The Federal Wastebook, published at the federal level over the last decade, highlights ridiculous examples in federal spending ranging from literally watching grass grow to studying whether the movement of sea monkeys changes the flow of the ocean. The Texas Wastebook seeks to uncover similar frivolous expenditures. “Since we at least have some semblance of fiscal responsibility in Texas in the form of a budget cap, we probably won’t find anything as bad as what we see at the federal level, like Swedish massages for rabbits, but you never know with some of these university grants” said Rep. Mayes Middleton, the caucus’s chairman. “A lot of what I think we’ll find, based on what we already know, is a lot of administrative bloat, bad contracts that waste taxpayer money, and general inefficiencies here and there that if you replicate across the entire government add up to a lot of wasted time, energy, and precious state resources that could be better used elsewhere.”
“We dedicate this project to all Texans, who deserve a government that uses their tax dollars effectively, but we especially dedicate a portion of this project to the U.S. Senator Tom Coburn who recently passed away,” said Rep. Matt Schaefer, a member of the House Appropriations Committee and the caucus’s Vice-Chair. “Senator Coburn inspired this project by creating and publishing the ‘Federal Wastebook’ during his time in the Senate. He had agreed to give guidance to the Texas Freedom Caucus in this project, but we’re fortunate that we have a successful example to follow in his work. He’ll be greatly missed.”
All you have to do to participate is report suspected government waste. Then we can do the legislative research necessary to put a stop to it. The process is simple:
- You report suspected fraud, waste, or abuse through our reporting portal on the project’s website.
- We compile your data and properly investigate using legislative research and inquiries into the matter at hand. The most egregious examples of confirmed waste will be included in TheTexas Wastebook, which we will publish biennially before the budget process begins.
- We will distribute copies of the Wastebook to grassroots organizations across the state and to our colleagues in the Legislature and their staff to bring awareness to the areas on which we must prioritize.
- By responding to the evidence in the report coupled with pressure from citizens like yourself, the Legislature passes a slimmer budget, well within the means of the average Texan's ability to pay and one that mirrors the same decline seen in businesses across the state due to the economic downtown.
- As a result of a slimmer budget, state government is forced to prioritize more effectively, leaving more resources available to essential areas in the budget such as healthcare and education.
- A more efficient budget translates to a lesser tax burden on citizens and a more efficient governmental structure.