It is no secret that the government can be a huge source of wasteful spending, but seldom is money wasted as swiftly as when it comes to purchases for our “national security”.
In 2004, the Department of Homeland Security purchased 207 “puffer machines” to deploy around the various airports.
These machines cost $160,000 each, and despite this insane price, they would break down quite regularly. Simple things like dirt and humidity could render the machines unusable, raising the yearly operating costs to just under $50,000 (per machine!).
Total loss: $33 Million.
Worst of all, only 94 of these expensive contraptions were actually put into service protecting us – the rest are still in a warehouse awaiting airport deployment, something that will never happen.
I hope they’ll be able to get a good price for them on Ebay, though I doubt they’ll ever fetch anything close to the $17 Million the taxpayer spent on them, even if they are new in box.
Scrapping the program won’t bother the TSA too much, they are about to spend close to $50 Million on those nifty new full body image scanners.