Wasteful Spending, Federal Budget | featured news

It's an outrageous tale: The federal government spends one out of every $10 in transportation aid on wasteful projects such as refurbishing a giant roadside coffee pot and constructing turtle tunnels.

On Washington state's remote and wooded Olympic Peninsula, major commotion is usually limited to a log tumbling off an overloaded lumber truck. But lately the peninsula has been roiled by a noisy debate over the expansion of a Border Patrol station in Port Angeles, a three-hour car and ferry ride away from the U.S.-Canadian land border.

President Barack Obama said on Saturday he would soon announce the elimination of dozens of wasteful or ineffective government programs as part of a broad effort to restore fiscal accountability to the federal budget.