POGO -- We deserve to know where our tax dollars go

 

Tell Congress: We deserve to know where our tax dollars go

Friend, your taxes should go toward bettering your community, creating jobs and businesses, funding schools, and supporting families with critical resources. You pay your taxes in the hopes that the money is reinvested into improving your and your neighbors’ quality of life.  POGO recently published a report reviewing 60 of the largest federal assistance programs, analyzing 2.4 million unique transactions from fiscal year 2024. What we found: 74% of grant spending is untraceable to the county, city, or zip code in which it is spent. More than a trillion dollars in direct payments have highly erroneous location data.  That means the government can’t tell you where many of the tax dollars it spends to build up and support your community actually go.  That’s unacceptable.  If you want to know for sure that money is reaching the intended communities, and if you want to root out waste, fraud, and misuse of government funds, you must have transparency. That’s the only starting point from which any real reform can grow.  There is immense promise in USAspending.gov, friend. And there are ways to fix this valuable tool so the federal government uses it as intended — and so that you can use it to get the transparency you deserve.   We shared our new report and recommendations with Congress. https://prod.cdn.everyaction.com/emails/van/PGO/PGO/1/78922/q7WLGt7b9Dbbubvp6FO5P6EcpZzIqFza4HzbRXEURLP_archive