Almost a decade ago, the federal government dropped $10 million for an Earth-monitoring satellite that never made it into space. Today it sits in a closet in Maryland. Cost to taxpayers for storing it: $1 million a year. And that's just what's hiding in one closet. Who knows what's in the rest of them?
Because we think the government should be held to at least the same standards as a publicly traded company, and because as taxpayers, we're America's shareholders, we performed an audit (財務(wù)檢查)of sorts of the federal books. We're not economists, but we do have common sense. We tried to get help from Congressional staffers from both parties, as well as various watchdog groups and agencies. In the end, we found that the federal government wastes nearly $1 trillion every year.
That's roughly equal to the amount collected annually by the Internal Revenue Service in personal income taxes. Put another way, it's also equal to about one-third of the country's $2.9 trillion total annual budget. And reclaiming that lost trillion could help wipe out the country's annual budget deficit(赤字), improve education, and provide health insurance for those who don't have it.
So how do you define "waste"? David Walker of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a federal watchdog agency, calls it "the government's failure to give taxpayers the most for their money." For our part, we used the kind of household test you would use on a piece of meat sitting in your refrigerator: If it smells rotten, it's waste. Our government regularly pays for products and services it never gets, wildly overpays companies to do things it could do more cheaply itself, loses money outright due to lax(不嚴(yán)格的)accounting and oversight, and spends money randomly on unnecessary programs.
How exactly does the federal government waste your hard-earned tax dollars? We've identified what we consider ten of the worst ways.
【小題1】The underlined sentence in Paragraph1 really means .
A.there are many other closets | B.there are some other satellites |
C.there is something else in the closets | D.the waste may be quite amazing |
A.Annoyed. | B.Calm. | C.Surprised. | D.Not concerned. |
A.The country’s annual budget is usually decided by the public. |
B.The government failed in launching the satellite. |
C.The government is only wasting money in space experiments. |
D.The amount collected annually in personal income taxes is equal to the country’s budget. |
A.Protecting Our Rights! |
B.Our Country Is In Danger! |
C.The Government Is Wasting Our Tax Dollars! |
D.How to Prevent Government from Wasting Money! |
A.The government’s taking some steps to stop wasting taxes. |
B.Presenting people’s feelings against the government’s wasting taxes. |
C.Giving suggestion to help the government solve the financial problem. |
D.Listing how the government is wasting taxes. |
【小題1】D
【小題2】A
【小題3】B
【小題4】C
【小題5】D
解析試題分析:
【小題1】推斷題。文章第一段講到,十年前聯(lián)邦政府為了一個最終沒有進(jìn)入太空的衛(wèi)星花費了一千萬美金,而如今卻躺在了馬里蘭州的一個小房間里,為了保存好它,每年需花費一百萬美金,所以作者覺得這種浪費是驚人的。故選D
【小題2】推斷題。從第一段最后一句Who knows what's in the rest of them?
及第二段最后一句及最后一段可看出作者對于政府的做法是憤怒的,故選A。B.答案是鎮(zhèn)定的,不對。C.驚訝的。D.漠不關(guān)心的,不對。
【小題3】判斷題。文中沒有講到每年預(yù)算由誰決定,排除A.文中倒數(shù)第二段,最后一句講到政府在一些不必要的項目上隨意花錢,可知,并非只浪費在太空實驗中。排除C
【小題4】文中主要講到了waste浪費,故應(yīng)選與waste有關(guān)的答案,故選C.文中并未提到如何來阻止這種浪費,文中并未提到有關(guān)的措施,排除D.
【小題5】最后一段We've identified what we consider ten of the worst ways.可知,接下來應(yīng)列舉十種政府浪費行為。故選D.
考點:說明文
點評:文章作者批評了政府浪費納稅人錢的做法,文中題目不難解答此類文章需要把握主旨,理解作者的寫作態(tài)度,結(jié)合細(xì)節(jié),在文中找答案。一般問題都不大。
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D
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