I Gotta Get My Hands on Some of that Sweet Coin

It's important for you mail in your taxes today because the Federal Government has a lot of spending to do. According to http://www.fedspending.org/ the Government has spent $876.1 billion dollars so far for FY 2006, and they are not even close to being done.

To give you a fuller picture, here's how the spending for FY 2005 breaks down: $384.2 billion was spent on contracts, $440.9 billion on grants, $118.8 billion on loans, and $653.2billion on insurance.

Of course, those are just the short stacks. The real money is spent on direct payments, which amounted to $1,004 billion in FY 2006.

Man, o man is that a lot of gravy! And if you're like me, you want a piece of the action!

But how do you get your taste?

I've found the best place to start is a handy little website called http://www.govbenefits.gov/. This site will help you know what federal benefits services you are eligible to apply for so you can start getting your hands on that sweet coin!

Go to the website and the first thing you will see is a picture of a friendly-looking black lady and her two children, which, if you think about it for too long, might start to seem a little racist. I wonder who was designing this web page and thought, "What's the first image we want people to associate with applying for government benefits? I know! Black moms!"

Anyway, ignore the picture and look to the right of it, where you will see a "Start Here" button. This button will take you through a questionnaire that will get your relevant information.

I don't recommend lying on this questionnaire since that will only give you a list of benefits you can't actually apply for. However, I certainly did take full advantage of any question that was ambiguous enough for me to answer in a way most likely to elicit more offers from the Government. For example, one question asked if I was "a current or prospective student." Even though I am not in school and have no plans to further my degree, I answered "yes" since I sometimes think I should take a computer class. I also answered "yes" to any question about whether I had alcohol dependency or substance abuse issues since I want to see if I can get the Government to mail me a check every month for beer money.

After fifty or so questions, the website gives you a list of programs you might be eligible to apply to for benefits. I got in a pretty good haul, although I'm not sure how the govbenefits.gov saw my info as relevant to some of the programs. For example, I made it clear on the questionnaire that I am a grown adult with no children, but govbenefits.gov thought I should apply to the Virginia Summer Meals for Kids program.

It also suggested I apply for benefits from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which puzzled me since I put myself down as being a US citizen. Surely this was a mistake. However, when I clicked for more details on the US Citizenship and Immigration Services program, it informed me, "In order to qualify for this benefit program, you may be a U.S. national, citizen or permanent resident, or an immigrant or an intending immigrant." That puzzled me even more. What kind of federal assistance would the US Citizenship and Immigration Services have to offer to a person who is already a US citizen?

Sadly, none of the programs offered me beer money. In fact, none of the programs that govbenefits.gov gave me even alluded to the alcoholism I claimed to have on the questionnaire. However, a lot of the programs it came up with sound more like mad scientist projects than any sort of benefit program I might be eligible for. I was directed to apply to The Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, The Division of Cell Biology and Biophysics, The Division of Genetics and Developmental Biology, and The Division of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Biological Chemistry.

I have no idea what I put down in my questionnaire that would have made them think that I would be a good match with a program for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. I don't even know what that kind of thing would do. The Program Description that govbenefits.gov gives says the program "supports research and research training in areas that join biology with the computer sciences, engineering, mathematics, and physics." I'm not sure what that means, but joining biology with computer sciences and engineering sounds a lot like what they did to Lee Majors in The Six Million Dollar Man.

Claiming to be a boozer on the questionnaire is the only thing I can think of that would have made govbenefit.gov direct me to these programs for biology, genetics and biological chemistry. They probably want to do experiments, and alchoholics famously make the best test subjects. In fact, I've recently just hypothosized a new conspiracy theory about the US Government kidnapping alcoholics and using them as human guinea pigs for experiments in bionics and bioengineering. Perhaps their plan is for me, lured by the promise of free beer money, to go down to their laboratories where I could be easily captured. Or perhaps they flagged my computer as soon as I answered the questionnaire. They may wait until I am asleep to launch a raid on my house and take me by surprise.

Wouldn't that be awful? Imagine how horrified I would be to wake up tomorrow and find that my legs had been removed and replaced with bionic implants that could run at top speeds of up to 90 miles per hour and jump over structures three stories high. And how terrible would it be to find my arms surgically taken from me and replaced with cyborg arms that could punch through concrete walls and lift objects weighing upwards of three tons? And my eyes! What if they implanted enhancements in my eyes that allowed me to see over long ranges and in the dark, as well as discern objects at the molecular level? And then what if they installed a weapons system so that I could fire lasers from my arms and eyes? And, since they've gone this far, shouldn't they go ahead and install jet boosters?

You guys talked me into it!

So write your congressman today and tell him you want Government to stop wasting the public's money on frivolous pork barrel projects and start responsibly spending it on my new cybernetic enhancements.

Then go to http://www.govbenefits.gov/ and find out what you can score!