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 (财务检查)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(不严格的)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.
【小题1】The underlined sentence in Paragraph1 really means        .

A.there are many other closetsB.there are some other satellites
C.there is something else in the closetsD.the waste may be quite amazing
【小题2】Which of the following can best describe the feeling of the author?
A.Annoyed.B.Calm.C.Surprised.D.Not concerned.
【小题3】Which of the following statements may be right?
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.
【小题4】The best title for the passage would be        .
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!
【小题5】What might be talked about if the passage is continued?
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.

The UN passed a rule in the year 2004 to improve the quality of drink water and reduce deaths caused by drinking unhealthy water each year. The UN has already worked out the specific plan to reduce half of the number, that is, five thousand. The UN announced in the world there are about 1/6 of the world population can't meet the sanitation regulation of drinking water.

The water we drink and use is running short in the world. We all have to learn to stop wasting our quite limited water. One of the steps we should take is to find ways of reusing it. Experiments have already been done on this field. Today in most large cities, fresh water is used only once, then it runs into waste system. But it is possible to pipe the used water to a purifying(净化)factory. There it can be filtered(过滤) and treated with chemicals so that it can be used again , just as it were fresh from a spring. But even large cities purified and reused its water, we still would not have enough. Then we could turn to the oceans. All we would have to do to make use of seawater on earth is to get the salt out of it. This method has already been used in many parts of the world.

47. The way to stop wasting water is to ________ .

A. do experiments with water

B. purify the used water and reuse it

C. use fresh water once again

D. make use of seawater

48. The passage tells us how to reuse the used water. Which is the right order of the process?

a. to have the used water filtered b. to put chemical in it

c. to pipe it to the user

d. to pipe the used water to be purified in a factory.

A. dabc B. bcda C. bdca D. dcba

49. There wouldn't be enough water for us if we didn't ________ .

A. turn to the ocean for more water

B. reuse used water and make use of seawater

C. make fresh water from the seawater

D. take steps to reuse all water on earth

50. The word "it" underlined in the last paragraph refers to ________ .

A. the process of collecting salt from the ocean

B. the process of getting rid of the salt in seawater

C. purified water

D. seawater

 

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