10 Embarrassing Times America Wasted A Ton Of Money

The United States is a nation of tremendous wealth. The country sports the world's highest nominal GDP, which is almost twice the size of China's in the No. 2 slot. Housing the world's largest economy and bearing the standard for many industrial sectors, the nation is also the preeminent spender in plenty of budgetary categories. That includes defense spending, where America's $997 billion in 2024 again dwarfed other countries around the world. Those figures might be astronomical, but they pale in comparison to the $1.34 trillion spent on Social Security commitments, the government's largest funding category in a more than $6 trillion budget.

With so much money flying around the government's coffers, it's unsurprising that lots of waste makes its way into the budget. Waste is an inevitable part of businesses and government agencies both large and small. Sometimes this comes as ill-spent dollars, and other times it's lost to fraud, overcharges, and even mistakes. It's worth taking a step back to remember that there's a long history of claiming government waste as a political tactic. Those on both sides of the aisle have weaponized this finger-pointing exercise to showcase the excesses and poor decisions of their opponents during election races for years. But just because claims of waste have become hyper-politicized doesn't mean the government isn't guilty of financial mistakes. Overspending, poor focal points, and improper allocations have taken on many forms over the years. These are some of the more embarrassing examples of government excess.

It might be useful to begin with a completely non-partisan issue: In 2014, The Washington Free Beacon reported that the IRS had come to terms on a purchasing agreement with IBM for software needs to the tune of $239 million a few years prior. That's not exciting, shocking, or even surprising. An organization staffed by almost 100,000 total employees around that time needs lots of physical equipment and a huge trove of software licenses to support its mission. However, among the items purchased was a collection of 11 products within the realm of "mainframe licenses and software support" that were never used. Buying things you don't end up using is a true waste of money, whether it's a $1 accessory or, in this case, $11.6 million in untouched software licenses 

This agreement took place in late 2007 and covered a five-year commitment that ended shortly before the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) uncovered the wasteful overspend. The oversight organization also noted that this overspend was at risk of being repeated in the future because the IRS had no established license management system to track and prevent this kind of snafu. The IRS responded to the accusation by claiming it hadn't used just five of the 11 flagged products, though the federal agency provided nothing to support those claims. Moreover, even if only five of the products did go unused, that still brings us to the same issue.

Close your eyes and picture a farm. You might imagine someone in a crosshatch button down amid their crops, or a family farm in a tight-knit community that empowers these operations. Sadly, that image is far from what commercial farming looks like today. Instead of local community operations, commercialized farming has become a huge business consolidated under just a few roofs.

The farming community is already being exploited by longtime equipment partners like John Deere. But on the government side of things, farmers are also losing out on subsidies designed to keep farming communities in business. USAFacts reported a total of $9.3 billion in 2024 subsidy payments. These are directed toward supporting cash crops like soybeans, corn, and cotton. However, the government also subsidizes insurance and indemnity streams. Subsidies are based on size, so the larger the operation, the more money a farmer receives. With massive corporations continuing to buy up land at an incorrigible rate, corporate agriculture is continuing to eat up an increasing slice of the pie. This leaves independent farmers with less to sustain themselves. As a searing reference point for this discrepancy, the tech billionaire Bill Gates is America's largest agricultural landowner. In total, more than half of the farm subsidies earmarked to help farmers continue producing flows to corporate enterprises and large-scale operations. And all this is to say nothing of the climate impact that cash crop subsidies create.

Appearing before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee in 2008, Salam Adhoob of Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity told lawmakers that more than $13 billion in funding for reconstruction projects "could not [be] properly accounted for" by an Iraqi auditing bureau, according to the Washington Post. Another organization estimated an additional $9 billion in lost funds due to corruption and waste, although there could be significant overlap between those figures given they were achieved independently. In total, the American expenditures tapped to rebuild Iraq after the war came out to roughly $60 billion, meaning somewhere between 21% and 37% of all money poured into this effort may have been wasted, lost, or stolen. American post-war efforts have often focused on rehabilitation. After World War II ended, the United States spent the equivalent of around $25 billion in today's money to help rebuild Japan.

Even with a long history of direct investment of this sort, the losses are staggering. In many instances, testimony from Adhoob and others suggested that some money was simply siphoned away by bad actors. Other instances of waste involved overcharging on contracts, both intentionally and accidentally, while other cash was allegedly provided to the radical militant force al-Qaeda.

It's common knowledge that overcharging and otherwise surprising costs are rampant across the federal government. Though grant funding to the tune of hundreds of thousands for seemingly unimportant research is a fairly common issue, high dollar figures attached to simple parts standard consumers would pay considerably less for is another expensive problem. For example, between 1975 and 1984, it was discovered that the contractor Litton radically increased its prices for simple equipment across roughly 45 individual procurement contracts for military purchases. In total, the Pentagon was bilked to the tune of $6.3 million in fraudulent overages.

Perhaps the most embarrassingly obvious overcharge came in the form of toilet seats. Litton charged the Department of Defense $640 per plastic toilet seat when delivering the units for installation in military aircraft. There are plenty of things that must be built or finished in specialized ways when building military vehicles, but the toilet seats in transport vessels are not one of them. The government spending upwards of 20 times what a consumer would need to fork over today for a replacement seat is completely nonsensical, but at least we know where that money went in this case.

When the American military arrived in Afghanistan, defeating insurgency forces and building an airbase were two of the top priorities. In no uncertain terms, the adversaries Americans were fighting in 2001 were largely Taliban and al-Qaeda members. Today, Taliban leadership has returned to the country, and this group has become the state's governing body. Given those results, some might argue that the over $2 trillion the U.S. spent in Afghanistan across the following two decades was entirely wasted, but there's no debating some tens of millions worth of funding went to waste due to some spending on uniforms.

Starting in 2007, the United States wasted around $28 million purchasing ineffective camouflage uniforms for the Afghan National Army. Outfitting the army with equipment, including uniforms, might not be considered wasteful on its face, but the pattern selected created a dramatic and unfortunate consequence. Since 2007, the Pentagon has spent $93 million on uniforms. Yet, the questionable choice of Hyperstealth's "Spec4ce Forest" pattern came because a senior Afghan leader thought it looked good. This was both among the most detectable and most expensive options explored, and Gizmodo estimates this selection was 41% higher in cost than alternatives. Even worse, the camo is totally unsuitable to the desert and mountainous backdrops, let alone Afghanistan's urban and town settings, potentially putting those wearing it in unnecessary danger.

One financial waste that stung the federal purse for millions is something that's sure to strike a nerve with many Americans. Flight upgrades are a luxury that only some of the wealthiest Americans can routinely afford. The average first-class flyer earns between $150,000 and $500,000 annually. As of 2024, only about 17% of the federal workforce earns $150,000 or more, and the average salary stood at roughly $106,000 in 2024, according to PBS. Yet, flight upgrades were a huge expenditure charged to the American public by federal employees traveling on the company dime.

Between the summers of 2005 and 2006, a 2007 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report indicated that federal workers purchased 53,000 upgraded flight tickets, with 67% of them labeled "improper" in the report's findings. The total cost to taxpayers added up to $230 million, while the improper upgrades tallied $146 million. Many of these upgrades came as business-class seats because agencies were only obliged to report first-class tickets to an oversight body. People across government agencies were found to have been engaging in this practice, and it's easy to understand their motivation. Anyone would take an upgrade if they could swing it, but with clear expectations set out for travel reservations, many were abusing the system, according to GAO.

The oil and gas industry wields an enormous lobbying arm. Nonrenewable energy production has long been a wild world of negotiation and sub-dealings. The Brookings Institution estimated in 2013 that around 1 billion people worldwide would feel the effects if their governments were more open about their dealings involving oil, gas, and minerals, and that includes the United States. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) plays an outsized role in the price you pay at the pump. In years passed, OPEC has intentionally manipulated the price of crude oil, leading to price hikes and shortages when advantageous. The organization isn't the end-all-be-all in oil production, though. American extraction efforts are widespread, and production on federal lands accounted for roughly 13% of U.S. extraction in 2023 (via Congress). This comes with an added royalty payment owed by producers. 

In 2015, American Progress reported that while royalty rates on private lands and those of offshore drilling operations have been reevaluated through the years, the 12.5% royalty charged by the federal government hadn't been changed since it was set in 1920. Moreover, the land-based rate is half that of the royalty collected from drilling in federal waters. This has led to missed revenue generating opportunities amounting to at least $730 million annually. Undercharging is only one aspect of the missed revenue, though. The industry is plagued by corner cutting, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. The Bureau of Land Management, according to GAO, isn't currently capable of effectively enforcing standards on the industry as a whole, leading to untold other losses and oversights in enforcing standards, collecting payments, and punishing malfeasance.

The allure of working from home is strong, and it has been for many years. There are even some compelling tax breaks available for some people who work from home. This arrangement spiked during the pandemic years, but it remains higher today than during the pre-pandemic era.

The federal workforce alone is made up of over 2 million people, Congress reports, necessitating a significant investment in federal workspace across the country. But many federal workers join in on the benefits of remote work. In December 2024, The Carolina Journal reported that the government was in possession of nearly 7,700 vacant buildings, though NPR reported in 2014 that this figure could actually be ten times higher as the government has no centralized list of its holdings to reference. Meanwhile, the Journal reported in March 2024 that no major government office building in Washington was even half full, while almost 33% of the federal workforce remained classified as remote. Though, in fairness, it also reiterated the Public Buildings Reform Board's claim that the daily average occupancy at the Department of Energy building was eight in 2023, a number the board itself admits may not be accurate. Even so, in both 2014 and 2016, officials estimated that the federal government spends upwards of $1.7 billion every year maintaining vacant structures.

Since 2018, CBS reports the federal government has spent as much as $3 billion fighting the effects of erosion along the nation's shorelines in the form of a project that's sure to raise some eyebrows. Rather than building seawalls or investing in other tidal defense structures — one option even introduces a green energy capture technology to pull double-duty — the government has been dumping huge loads of sand onto beaches to "renourish" the coastal landscapes. On paper, refreshing beaches seems like a great idea that may infuse coastal communities with new tourism draws and enhanced beauty alongside a defense against rising tides and other climate effects. However, in practice, much of this sand gets washed away as the tides come and go, leading to a constant need to continue dumping even more of the material down onto the shores.

A considerable amount of this investment has gone into Florida's beaches, repairing damage caused by seasonal hurricanes that hurl enormous amounts of seawater up onto the land. It's also been suggested that rebuilt beaches are even more vulnerable to erosion than sandy landscapes that haven't been replenished. The project is a noble one, but the sheer cost of its operation should give lawmakers pause. There are alternatives available to protect shorelines from this damage, including dumping down ballast stones — known as riprap — instead of sand.

Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) talked quite a big game in 2025. As of November 2025, DOGE's website estimates the organization has cut roughly $214 billion from the federal budget, though that claim is hotly contested. While the exact amount DOGE has really cut may be difficult to pin down, the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker shows a "verifiable canceled funding" figure of $16.3 billion and "DOGE itemized cuts" at $69.3 billion, suggesting the vast majority of its claims remain unverified as of May 2025.

In June 2025, NPR reported that nearly 60,000 federal employees had been fired by the new administration. Context is king, and the DOGE team has thrived on murkiness when it comes to context. Max Stier, CEO of the nonpartisan advocacy group the Partnership of Public Service, told CNN in March 2025 that DOGE's actions amount to the "arson of a public asset." Gutting the federal workforce creates a void that isn't easy to fill. Without skilled employees in a raft of positions across the government, the business of running the country becomes increasingly difficult. Stier's organization estimates that, instead of saving the government billions in contracts and salaries, these cuts will actually cost taxpayers as much as $135 billion. One example can be seen in the IRS. The agency plans to cut roughly 40% of its staff, severely limiting its ability to perform audits and follow up on discrepancies. Yale's Budget Lab estimates that this could result in between $323 billion and $2.4 trillion in lost tax revenue over the coming decade.