Waste & Red Tape Favored over a Break for Taxpayers

Come up with a plan to save Uncle Sam million millions of dollars and months of backlogs -- and the government will shoot it down.

Prakash Khatri works for the US Immigration Service. He cooked up a plan that'd save taxpayers $350 million. It'd also cut the time one million legal immigrants would have to spend in waiting lines from 45 hours to just about 15.

Can't have all that thrift and red tape cutting now, can we?

Apparently not. US Citizenship and Immigration Services killed the time and money saving plan. Seems it'd cut into their application renewal fees -- about 20% of the agency's $1.8 billion budget.

They don't want to give up that steady cash flow. But have no problem letting taxpayers pick up the slack for them. (Boston Globe)