News today that Obamacare will continue to increase health care costs probably made little noise, as taxpayers are already feeling the impact of the law. A report released today by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services show that spending will increase under the massive government overhaul of the country's health care system passed in June. Total spending on health care in the U.S. will total $4.6 trillion by 2019 - 20 percent of all spending. This represents a 6.3 percent increase per year.

We warned for months of the budgeting gimmicks and legislative trickery used to mask the true cost of this enormous government takeover, and highlighted the potential impact of Obamacare in our Cost of Government Day report. The fact that the calculations are now showing our warnings to be correct is anything but surprising.

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We have been working hard to garner support for transparency in New Jersey, and were happy to see Gov. Christie launch a transparency website this summer. However, bills to instantiate spending transparency for taxpayers have stalled in the legislature every session they were introduced. Recently, politicians have argued against the creation of some of these transparency portals by citing the costs of implementing such efforts. This perception that transparency will end up costing taxpayers more in the long run is owed to the astronomical estimates of past costs associated with these projects – approximations that have nearly always been far above the actual costs. Oklahoma’s transparency portal was estimated to cost $300,000 when the only expense that the state actually incurred was the purchase of software to report spending data, which totaled $8,000. The website was built and maintained within existing resources. Similarly, Missouri taxpayers were told they would be saddled with a $293,140 tab for their transparency portal. However, resources were reallocated from existing IT funds and the construction and maintenance of the Missouri Accountability Portal did not cost Missourians a single penny.

We have seen localities balk at requests for transparency before.  However, these officials always fail to answer how the simple transfer of information they should already have been available to officials constitutes any significant burden on their workforce or resources. Taxpayers should take note of which officials oppose allowing public scrutiny on spending – it suggests these employees may have something to hide.

Moreover, transparency nets real savings for states and localities. In Texas, Comptroller Susan Combs identified over $8.7 million in savings simply by using her portal to locate inefficiencies and redundancies, such as duplicative contracts for printer toner and ink. Similarly, many states, such as South Carolina, have cited a massive decrease in Freedom of Information Requests, that have helped costs and redirect resources for more useful purposes.

This all points to the broader argument that transparency is not a privilege – it is a right. Taxpayers deserve to know how their money is being spent and should get to track it, dollar-for-dollar, at the state, local and federal level. If you are in New Jersey, call your representative and tell them to support transparency now!

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Ellen Miller, Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation, offered a scathing rebuke of the federal transparency effort this week at the Gov 2.0 Summit, calling sites such as Recovery.gov “almost useless.”  Miller honed in on the fact that the government has spent a lot of money retooling websites that taxpayers still can’t use effectively. This was the case when the Obama administration announced an $18 million overhaul of Recovery.gov, and taxpayers were left footing the bill for a shiny new portal that is still no better at tracking “stimulus” spending. We have been questioning the amount of spending on these sites for a long time, as the expenses have never seemed to garner any results.

Sunlight, not hopeful the government will reverse its say-one-thing-do-another approach to transparency, has launched its own project to track spending after finding over $1.3 trillion in faulty reporting of government spending on USAspending.gov and other sources. Their site, Clear Spending, offers a stunning view into the opacity of government finances. Visitors can see, for instance, that $14 billion has gone unreported for Department of Agriculture spending, while 2.3 billion in spending has been incompletely reported. This is certainly fodder for a debate on how the government can even claim to be transparent when the information taxpayers deserve to see isn’t properly tracked within agencies and departments themselves.

We are glad to see others ignore the shiny bells and whistles that the Obama administration has used to distract from true accountability. While there has been some preliminary progress on the federal transparency front, there needs to be more thorough and swift implementation of government transparency. We offered several suggestions for improvements to USAspending.gov back in 2008 and with Sunlight Foundation renewing the focus on the lack of disclosure on government spending, we hope those proposals are taken seriously.

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Maryland taxpayers awoke to a distressing recognition today: Maryland has the fourth  to last Cost of Government Day in the nation.  Cost of Government Day is a measure of the size and burden of government, and is calculated using measures of both spending and regulatory burdens; Maryland’s Cost of Government Day is September 4th—the first time that it has ever fallen as late as September.

The national date falls on August 19th, meaning that Marylanders have to work an additional 16 days to pay off their share of the burden of government.  To put that in perspective, the enormous federal government imposes 16 days-worth less burden than Maryland’s government.

The 2010 Cost of Government Day Report also details how this expansion of government is funded.  Since 2003, Marylanders have been the unfortunate recipients of new taxes to the tune of $2.1 billion—an increase of $357.39 per person. As Maryland continues to spend and push to raise taxes on alcohol, Maryland taxpayers are left with one of the latest cost of government days in the nation.

To view ATR & CFA's full press release, click here

Photo Credit: daltonrooney

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Our friends at the Independent Institute launched a website Tuesday that calculates taxpayers’ personal cost of government in terms of the taxes that they will be required to pay given the federal spending burden. According to the Independent Institute, the Government Cost Calculator estimates that the current U.S. national debt of $13.4 trillion will reach $23 trillion by the year 2019.  Federal spending will top $3.5 trillion with $1.4 trillion of that spending financed by debt just this year alone. That is why they offer a service on their website that calculates how much you will pay for various federal programs now and over the course of a lifetime. It then compares those tax payments to the forgone earnings that would have been possible if such funds were kept and invested in private market accounts. Lastly, allows you to see the difference between government expenses and your tax payments, showing what the future of your financial burden.

However, the tax burden really only illustrates part of the story: The Center for Fiscal Accountability authors a report on the Cost of Government which looks at the total imposition of government on the economy, and calculates what the total spending and regulatory burden is on taxpayers at the local, state and federal levels. MyGovCost.Com does calculate the gap between taxes paid and federal spending, illustrating that taxes can only finance a part of the ballooning size of government. The calculator certainly paints a bleak picture – unfortunately, it only gets worse: as shown in the Cost of Government Day report, government ate up far more than the tax burden imposed on Americans in 2010; it required 63 percent of national income to sustain itself. COGD fell on August 19 in 2010 and some states, such as Connecticut, have to work as late as September 17 to pay off their cost of government. The Independence Institute’s new site is an awesome tool for taxpayers to understand the tax burden as a consequence of government spending. Be sure to check out the COGD report after calculating your cost of government to get the full picture on the extraordinary burden of government!

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