This Tax Day, Waste Your Dollars

Happy tax day!

Returns are due to the IRS today, and in honor of that, FAMM President Julie Stewart explains in The Hill how the government plans to waste your money this year on mandatory minimum sentences that make no sense -- fiscal or otherwise.  Here's an example:

... a mother like Sabrina Giles is sentenced to 12 years in prison for allowing her abusive boyfriend to run his meth dealing business out of her New Mexico house. Ms. Giles, who had never even been arrested before, was gainfully employed and providing for her young daughter, despite struggling with substance abuse. What she needed was drug treatment, but what she got was more than a decade in federal prison. Her daughter was forced to grow up without the mother she loved and is now a teenager.

This isn’t tough on crime -- it’s just stupid.

And guess what: everyone knows it's stupid, too -- the public and legislators on both sides of the aisle.

Here's a list of recent naysayers on our country's foolish over-spending on mandated over-incarceration:  former American Conservative Union president David Keene. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA). Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ). The Cato Institute’s director of criminal justice, Tim Lynch. Former Republican congressman and Bush administration DEA chief, Asa Hutchinson. Televangelist Pat Robertson. The growing list of conservatives over at Right on Crime.

The grand daddy of the anti-tax movement himself, Grover Norquist, has testified to Congress that “[t]he benefits, if any, of mandatory minimum sentences do not justify…[the] burden to taxpayers.”

Congrats, fellow taxpayers, on filing on time.  Let the waste of your money resume!