Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai exposed the FCC's Lifeline (lately Obamaphone) program for what it is -- a giant fraud that is ever-expanding and piling higher and higher taxes on people who actually pay for their phone service.

When created 30 years ago, Lifeline was originally intended as a way to make telephone service affordable for poorer Americans. Now, it has become a "fraud-friendly" giveaway program, Pai states in his piece for National Review. And it's costing those who don't use the program plenty. He explains:

Lifeline is funded by a “universal service fee” — essentially, a tax — placed on your phone bill. And since 2008, Lifeline spending has almost doubled, growing from $819 million to $1.6 billion. To finance this and other spending on universal services, the tax rate on Americans’ phone bills has increased by 83 percent over the past seven years.

The reason the program keeps expanding is because Lifeline is the only FCC program without a cap on spending, as Pai notes. And because of that, he is calling for "urgent" reform and for Lifeline to be placed on a budget. By doing so, Pai argues that Lifeline can be restored to its original purpose of "providing a hand up, not a handout" through discounted service, not free service.

"For the sake of all Americans who fund the program through taxes on their monthly phone bills, we cannot expand a broken program," Pai writes.

And expanding it is. New proposals are under review by the FCC to add broadband service so that all Americans have access to affordable Internet. And if the so-called Obamaphone program has been any indication of intrinsic waste and abuse of taxation, "Obamaweb" will prove to be more of the same.

Read more here in which Pai uncovers how tribal lands in Oklahoma are getting the most out of the Lifeline program and enjoying ten times the payouts as other areas in the nation.