Government Racket, The

In 1992, Martin L. Gross shocked the nation with his New York Times bestseller , The Government Racket: Washington Waste A to Z, after whcih he testified before Congress five times on hidden catastrophic waste. Now he has returned to the scene of the crime and found that things have gotten even worse.

He shows how the claim that the "era of a big government is over" is a blatant lie. With 2 percent inflation, federal spending rose 7 percent and is now more than $2 trillion annually. The Social Security fund is empty and $1.2 trillion in debt, while its FCA surplus is squandered on everything except the aged.

In this provacative follow-up volume, the author outlines an encylcopedia of new wastem shows what happened to his previous suggestions to cut costs, and lays out a blueprint for governent reform that could stop Washington's dysfunstional behavoir . In thirty-six chapters he gives scores of examples of giant new waste and abuse, including:

• Duplication and overlap cost us billions in 154 different failing job-training programs and 127 different teenage bureaucracies, nine alone in Department of Justice.
• Billions are rountinely wasted on ludicrious Washinton projects, from golf courses for congressman to large cash pensions for hyperactive children.
• While the taxpayer pays, Washinton subsizes General Motors, Intel, Pillsbury, and scores of gaint firms to the tune of $75 billion a year.
• The Defense Department regualry flies members of Congress around the world, with spouses, for freebie holidays on liquor-loaded planes.

Martin L. Gross, has written more than a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Government Racket: Washington Waste from A to Z, which began the serious debate over capricious and wasteful government, and A Call for Revolution, as well as The End of Sanity, The Medical Racket and The Conspiracy of Ignorance. His 1995 bestseller, The Tax Racket, exposed the excesses of the IRS and asked for its elimination. He has testified before the U. S. Congress five times. Three of his prior nonfiction works, The Brain Watchers, The Doctors, and The Psychological Society, stimulated public debate in the fields of psychological testing, medicine, and psychiatry, resulting in Congressional hearings and reforms. Mr. Gross has been a member of the faculty of The New School for Social Research and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Social Science at New York University. He lives and works in suburban Connecticut.