Introduction

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan established a panel of 161 senior business executives and more than 2,000 private sector volunteers to undertake a comprehensive review of the federal government. The report of the President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control — better known as the Grace Commission — made nearly 2,500 recommendations that would save taxpayers $424.4 billion during a three-year period by eliminating waste, mismanagement and inefficiency in Washington.

After the report was published in 1984, commission chairman J. Peter Grace joined with syndicated columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Jack Anderson to form Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) to promote implementation of the recommendations at every level of government.

During the past 21 years, CAGW and its more than 1 million members and supporters have helped taxpayers save more than $825 billion. Since 1991, CAGW has published an annual exposé of pork-barrel spending in the 13 federal appropriations bills known as the “Congressional Pig Book.” CAGW also produces “Prime Cuts,” a comprehensive look at the depth and breadth of waste throughout the federal government.

Recommendations range from eliminating corporate welfare to cutting unnecessary defense systems. “Prime Cuts 2005” identified $232 billion in potential one-year savings and $2 trillion in five-year savings.

Implementing the recommendations made in “Prime Cuts” alone could go a long way toward returning fiscal sanity to Washington, especially in light of a $412 billion federal deficit.1

The Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions is an independent research and educational institution offering free-market solutions to Kentucky’s most pressing problems. Like CAGW, it focuses intently on evaluating public spending options and recommending better choices on behalf of Kentucky citizens.

The institute published “Planning for Kentucky’s Future in 2005,” a handbook that offers ideas to help elected officials prioritize — as well as cut — spending. This guide is a useful tool to help taxpayers evaluate the quality of their political representatives’ performance. Other recent publications include policy reports that make the case for privatizing Kentucky State Parks and medical-malpractice tort reform.

The battle against wasteful spending is spreading from Washington — with its budget debates by Congress and the president — to state legislatures. As a result, CAGW is teaming up with free-market think tanks like the Bluegrass Institute to launch a series of state publications that expose overspending and identify areas of potential savings. Kentucky’s current fiscal crisis presents a timely opportunity to produce the Bluegrass State’s own “Piglet Book.”

In this report, CAGW and the Bluegrass Institute compile a list of questionable expenditures that reveals to the public, media and policymakers how Kentuckians’ hard-earned tax dollars are being misspent.

Modeled after its two most prominent publications, the “Kentucky Piglet Book” combines the outrageous government-spending examples of CAGW’s “Pig Book” with the seriousness portrayed in its “Prime Cuts” publication. The resulting publication reveals rampant and undisciplined spending by Kentucky’s state government. It unmasks an ingrained addiction to overspending as the real culprit behind the commonwealth’s budget crisis.

We believe that state government spending can be substantially reduced when taxpayers’ monies are spent in ways that benefit all Kentuckians over the long term, not for the benefit of special-interest groups promoting projects for the benefit of a few.

Neith