Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) released its 26th annual compendium of the hair-raising, harrowing, and horrifying Taxpayer Tricks and Treats.

Treat: The Tax Cuts that Did Not Die

After Congress brewed up the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which made the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act tax cuts permanent, banishing the specter of a 68 percent tax hike, President Trump signed the bill into law on July 4, 2025. Now, taxpayers can rest peacefully knowing these tax cuts are permanent, and the other goodies provided in the bill will help annual wages rise from the crypt by an average of $11,600. This fiscal sorcery will leave both candy and cash in everyone’s bag.

Trick: CMMI is a Case Study in Horrifying Waste and Inefficiency

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) was created in 2010 as part of the Affordable Care Act and was tasked with creating and testing new models that would improve healthcare quality and lower costs in Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. However, mad scientists experimenting with the nation’s healthcare, in 15 years since its creation, CMMI bureaucrats cooked up Frankenstein-like models that failed to lower costs or improve care. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that CMMI would save $2.8 billion between 2011 and 2020, but in that time CMMI cost taxpayers $5.4 billion. CBO also projects that CMMI will cost another $1.3 billion from 2021-2030. Congress should put an end to this ghastly waste of taxpayers' money and eliminate CMMI.

Treat: Congress Resurrects the FCC’s Auction Authority

After Congress sunk the Federal Communications Commission’s auction authority into an early grave on March 9, 2023, it was resurrected in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The legislation ordered the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to locate 800 MHz of federally held spectrum for future auctions, which will enhance America’s global leadership in wireless technology.

Trick: Abuse Continues to Haunt 340B

There is no need to seek out ghosts, goblins, and ghouls this Halloween. They all come together in the mismanaged and wasteful 340B drug discount program, which was created in 1992 to help federally funded clinics and public hospitals that serve a large uninsured population cover the cost of drugs and provide discounts to patients.

Hospitals and contract pharmacies have horribly abused this program and pocketed 340B revenue as profit instead of passing the savings on to the patients the program was intended to help. It is time for Congress to put an end to this abuse and enact reforms to the 340B program including a clear definition of an eligible patient, better verification of eligibility at the time the prescription is filled, and greater transparency.

Treat: Executive Order Speeds Up Creepy Crawling DOD Procurement Process

The Trump administration is attempting to banish the ghosts from the DOD’s haunted procurement house. President Trump’s Executive Order (EO) 14265, released on April 9, 2025, directs the DOD to speed up the antediluvian acquisition process by establishing a preference for commercial products and services. The EO will hopefully bring a peaceful and taxpayer-friendly end to the wasteful duplicative systems that the Pentagon too often brews in its cauldron.

Trick: Most Favored Nation is Frightening

President Trump has made lowering drug prices a cornerstone of his second term in office. But the president should not keep pushing for a scary Most Favored Nation (MFN) policy to import price controls from other countries. An August 11, 2020, letter signed by 83 organizations expressed “grave concerns” with President Trump’s MFN executive order during his first term, noting “adopting these price controls will slow medical innovation, threaten American jobs, and undermine criticism of single-payer systems.” President Trump could turn this trick into a treat by rejecting MFN in favor of reduced regulations, encouraging free-market solutions and American innovation, negotiating better trade deals, and getting foreign countries to pay their fair share.

Treat: The IRS’s Direct File Program Gets a Well-Deserved Death

After Congress allocated $15 million for the IRS to study the creation of its own tax preparation software, agents working under President Biden decided to go rogue and skip the study by building the program. Known as Direct File, it was supposed to be used to prepare tax returns for taxpayers, allowing the agency to act as preparer, biller, auditor, and enforcer of tax laws. It gave taxpayers the choice to walk the plank and accept the IRS’s calculations, or leap overboard and hope for the best. Congress wisely eliminated Direct File in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, sending it to an early grave before too much damage could be inflicted on taxpayers.

Trick: The Undying Budget Impasse Causing Pennsylvania’s Fiscal Nightmare

On October 27, 2025, Pennsylvania’s budget impasse reached 115 days. Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D) caused the budget’s suspended animation by insisting on his plan to raid the Rainy-Day Fund to pay for public transit expansions, corporate welfare projects, and other discretionary spending proposals that are laying siege to fiscal discipline and left public services in limbo. If it does not end soon, this grave standoff threatens to metastasize into a multi-billion-dollar fiscal black hole.

Treat: Burying D.C.'s Ghost Streetcar

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser’s (D) May 27, 2025, decision to put the final nail in the coffin of the $200 million streetcar that long haunted the H Street Corridor marks a refreshingly delightful reanimation of at least some fiscal sanity for D.C. taxpayers. Operating costs alone sucked away $10 million annually, and replacing aging cars would have cost $11 million apiece, bleeding taxpayers dry without expanding the streetcar’s tentacles further into the city. The streetcar crept along in mixed traffic, constantly waylaid by double-parkers and congestion, serving only a sliver of the ridership that buses carried. Mayor Bowser’s decision to kill off this zombie project means District residents will have less blood-red ink and more mobility.

Trick: The Army Builds Frankenstein’s tank

In 2013, the Army greenlit the M10 Booker, a light tank that could be airdropped from a C-130 or C-17 cargo aircraft. But by the time the $1 billion monstrosity was cobbled together, it could not leave the lab. The M10 was too big to fit in the aircraft and too heavy to drive across eight of the 11 bridges at Fort Campbell, one of the bases hosting the tank. On June 9, 2025, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll stated, “We, the Army as a customer, kind of helped create this Frankenstein that came to be.” Two days later, on June 11, 2025, the Army killed the M10 Booker. All existing tanks will be sent to the graveyard to rest in pieces.

Treat: Space Launch System (SLS) Sinks Into the Abyss

In the fiscal year 2026 skinny budget released on May 2, 2025, the Trump administration called for an end to the haunted rocket ride through development hell known as the Space Launch System (SLS). The program was 140 percent over budget after only three launches due to lax oversight that led to poor performance and spiraling costs. A March 10, 2020, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Office of Inspector General report found that every component of the rocket designed for the first Artemis test “experienced technical challenges, performance issues, and requirement changes that collectively have resulted in $2 billion of cost overruns and increases and at least 2 years of schedule delays.” The Trump administration proposal will allow for two more launches, with each costing $4 billion. The price tag is scary enough to bury the program now, preferably with a wooden stake through its budget, instead of keeping it as a zombie rocket.

Trick: Joint Strike Fighter’s Never-ending Tale of Woe

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program was meant to serve as the silver bullet in the Department of Defense’s (DOD) arsenal, but its software development issues continue to suck the life out of the program like a vampire at a Pentagon costume party. A January 31, 2025, DOD Operation Test and Evaluation (OTE) report found “no improvement in meeting schedule and performance timelines for developing and testing software designed to address deficiencies and add new capabilities.”

Lockheed Martin, the JSF’s prime contractor, is running a financial horror show that needs more than a few garlic cloves. It has failed to deliver the upgraded software in Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3), which was meant to be ready in April 2023 and is set to run $1 billion over budget, while also failing to fix the aircraft’s current TR-2 software. Looks like the only thing flying on schedule this Halloween is a witch on a broomstick, and she probably has better software support.

Treat: Broadband Hobgoblin Gets A Facelift

The National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) put out a hideous Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) funding notice that imposed ugly requirements on states to receive funding from $42.45 billion program. By removing the stitches and smoothing the lines, the Trump administration’s NTIA gave the Biden administration’s hobgoblin a facelift by returning the bones of the program back to Congress’s original intent, making it technology neutral, and removing administrative barriers to deployment. The new look requirements have helped save $22 billion so far from the much more attractive state proposals.

Trick: A Fiscal Horror Show of Stadium Subsidies

On April 28, 2025, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) announced her intention to shovel more than $1 billion of taxpayer blood money to build the Washington Commanders’ private palace, even as the city’s schools crumble and transit creaks like a haunted house on the verge of collapse. Bowser’s “Sports Facilities Fee” rebranding is nothing but a phantom tax trick, a Halloween mask over the same old corporate welfare giveaway. Not to be outshined by the nation’s capital, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) inked a bill that sacrifices more than $500 million to bankroll a new Kansas City Chiefs stadium, a monstrous financial commitment that will haunt future budgets like a restless poltergeist. Taxpayers should tremble at the prospect of the public coffers turned into a haunted house of public debt, with the specter of more stadium subsidies lurking in every corridor.

Treat: Murder of the Wasteful Express

The Department of Transportation drove a wooden stake through California’s undead high-speed rail boondoggle by withdrawing $4 billion from its funding. Created in 2008 and kept alive through the dark arts of bureaucratic denial, the project has destroyed $111 billion trying to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles and still cannot find the tracks. With the Trump administration finally severing the golden vein which kept this monstrosity alive, taxpayers might just escape this financial haunted train.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251027912037/en/

Today, Citizens Against Government Waste released its 26th annual compendium of the hair-raising, harrowing, and horrifying Taxpayer Tricks and Treats.