The $5M 9/11 Widow

[erpowers]

Today Oprah is doing a show on the 9/11 widow that spent $5M buying different things. This was some of the money she got as a result of her husband dying on 9/11. I am not upset with Oprah for doing this show; however, the amount of money this woman spent is not a problem for me. In my opinion (and factually) the money this woman spent is a drop in the bucket compared to the wasteful spending of our government. In addition, even though her money was government money her spending of the $5M did not stop this country from reaching any of its goals. Congress on the other hand is a different story.

Congress has wasted $8B in just one defense spending bill. I think in some other spending bills the amount of wasted money has gone as high as $33B. This is also the Congress that never fails to give itself a raise every year and tells the American people we cannot afford to fund different programs.

If Oprah really wanted to do a show on wasteful spending she should go get members of Congress and make them explain why they put $8B worth of pork into last years defense spending bill and did not provide for soldiers to have body armor and armored vehicles. She could also go and get Don Young and Ted Stevens and ask them why they wanted to spend somewhere around $430M on a bridge to nowhere instead of putting that money into fixing the levees in New Orleans. She might also want to ask them why it is that every time something bad happens in this country they do not think about cutting the wasteful spending but instead decided to cut social programs that benefit the poor and cut funding for soldiers, like their health care. So I do not care whether a 9/11 widow spends $5M, but I do care about the wasteful spending of Congress in that it effects the lives of the people in this country. The spending of the 9/11 widow does not effect anyone's life.

[Debi]

1. Was all of the money government money?

So much of that money came from private widow/orphan funds not tax dollars.

[BlueEyedSon]

2. Hello, $1T will be the total wasted on the Iraq debacle.

[No Exit]

3. I think Oprah should have Dov Zakheim on and ask him how he

"lost" that... what was it?... $3 Trillion..?

[unblock]

4. losing a spouse and getting a lot of money can BOTH lead to stupid things

look at how lottery winners piss away their money.
people who are grieving also do stupid things, after all, they have the hugest void in their life they're trying to fill.

i can only imagine the temptation of having such a huge void and all that money with which to fill it.

notwithstanding that much of the money was to replace the lost income of the spouse; nevertheless we're talking about huge bank account balances that most of these people were never used to.

to me, it is no surprise that some of them might piss it away frivolously. in fact, i'm surprised we haven't heard more of these stories.