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Show r . . Authors Everywhere Have you ever wondered whatthe Washington Wash-ington bureaucrats did to keep their employees busy? I often did. I knew that there were thousands of economists on the Federal pay- roll but I was never sure what they did when they weren't issuing regulations. reg-ulations. Now I know. They wrote pamphlets. Index Makers Not all of them wrote pamphlets. Some were assigned as-signed to indexing the pamphlets their fellow employees wrote. This index, which I have before me, is 800 pages long. It's a partial list of materials published by the government gov-ernment through 1950. Hawks and Hacksaws As migtht be expected, this army of authors soon became hard pressed for new material. Consequently, your tax money and mine 'was spent for some very strange research. re-search. Rather than letting' inquiries inquir-ies from the people guide them in their research, they set out on their own. And they certainly ranged far afield. Costa Rica Even For example, one Federal employee did some marketing research on Costa Rica. The result? "Markets for Hacksaw Hack-saw Blades in Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic and Mexico" ,1 --i i A has b cn published at taxpayers' expe.-.se by the IS. S. Department of Commerce. Cther pamphlets cover such topics as installment selling of automobile5: in Oceania. Asia and Africa; markets for talcum tal-cum powder in Honduras. Penny Foolish Taken singly, each of these projects does not cost much when compared with the overall expenditures of the Federal Government. But added together to-gether it represents a sizeable waste of tax money that otherwise other-wise could be spent for such worthwhile worth-while projects as schools or highways. high-ways. Printing Bill I have been unable un-able to obtain accurate figures as to just how much the government has spent annually for printing pamphlets and reports but the closest estimate I have obtained is $150 million per year. The Solution This excessive printing bill is one reason why I am sure that the budget cuts we are making back here now will not clippie any vital governmental service. To date the House has reduced budgets recommended by the previous administration by $3 billion. This is enough money to run Utah's entire state government govern-ment for more than 95 years. |