OMB Director Peter Orszag tells us about the budget being released today, in particular the volume on Terminations, Reductions, and Savings.
We in the Administration have
spoken often about the President’s Budget heralding a new era of
responsibility—an era in which we not only do what we must to lift our
economy out of recession, but in which we also lay a new foundation for
long-term growth and prosperity. This means making long overdue
investments and reforms in health care, education, and energy. It also
means restoring fiscal discipline. We cannot put our nation on a
course for long-term growth with uncontrollable deficits and debt, and
we no longer can afford to tolerate investments in programs that are
outdated, duplicative, ineffective, or wasteful.
That’s why the
Budget we’re releasing today includes a separate volume,
Terminations, Reductions, and Savings,
which identifies more than 100 terminations, reductions, or other areas
of savings that take nearly $17 billion off the federal government’s
bottom line next year alone. About half of the savings for next fiscal
year are from defense programs, and about half are from non-defense
programs.
The programs in Terminations, Reductions, and Savings
are ones that do not accomplish the goals set for them, do not do so
efficiently, or do a job already done by another initiative. They
include these ten:
· LORAN-C ($35 million). This long-range, radio-navigation system has been made obsolete by GPS.
· Abandoned Mine Lands Payments ($142 million). This program now pays to clean up mines that have already been cleaned up.
· Educational attaché, Paris, France ($632,000).
The Department of Education can use e-mail, video conferencing, and
modest travel to replace a full-time representative to UNESCO in Paris,
France.
· Los Alamos Neutron Science Center refurbishment ($19 million). The linear accelerator housed here was built 30 years ago and no longer plays a critical role in weapons research.
· Even Start ($66 million). The
most recent evaluation found no difference between families in the
program and those not in it across 38 of 41 outcomes. Strengthening
early childhood education is accomplished through significant
investments in proven, more effective programs such as Head Start,
Early Head Start, and the Early Learning Challenge Fund.
· Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation ($1 million). Due to high overhead, the Foundation would spend only 20 percent of its 2010 appropriation on the fellowships it awards.
· Advanced Earned Income Tax Credit ($125 million). This
program benefits very few taxpayers, and has an extremely high error
rate: GAO found that 80 percent of recipients did not meet at least
one of its requirements.
· Javits Gifted and Talented Education Program ($7 million). Grants from this program go to only 15 school districts nationwide, and there are no empirical measures to judge their efficacy.
· Public Broadcasting Grants ($5 million). USDA
made these grants to support rural public broadcasting stations in
their conversions to digital broadcasting. That transition is now
almost complete.
· Rail Line Relocation Grants ($25 million). This program, duplicative of a merit-based program, is loaded with earmarks.
The steps we are detailing in Terminations, Reductions, and Savings
are part of the Administration’s larger effort to change how Washington
does business and put the nation’s fiscal house in order. Today
represents a significant installment in our commitment to review the
federal budget line by line.
But our efforts to restore fiscal
responsibility have already begun. To date, we have taken the following
steps to cut waste, save taxpayer dollars, and make government more
effective:
· The Budget includes an historic down payment on health care reform, the key to our long-term fiscal future.
· The
Budget will cut the deficit in half by the end of the President’s first
term and was constructed without commonly used budget gimmicks that,
for instance, hide the true costs of war and natural disasters.
· The
Budget will bring non-defense discretionary spending to its lowest
level as a share of GDP since we began keeping records in 1962.
· The
President has announced a contracting reform effort that will greatly
reduce no-bid contracts and help to save $40 billion. In support of
this effort, Secretary of Defense Gates, in consultation with our
nation’s military leadership, unveiled an unprecedented effort to
reform defense contracting.
· The President directed agency heads at the first Cabinet meeting to identify at least $100 million in administrative savings.
· The
President personally called on the congressional leadership to pass
PAYGO laws so that Congress will be required to adhere to a simple
principle: to pay for what it spends.
Now, every one of the programs listed in our Terminations, Reductions, and Savings
volume has a supporter, and there will be vocal and powerful interests
that will oppose different aspects of this Budget. I am under no
illusions that change will be easy, but after an era of profound
irresponsibility, I believe that Americans are ready to put
problem-solving ahead of point-scoring and to reconstruct an economy
built on a solid foundation.
That’s why I know the President will
work with Congress to reform and transform Washington, to make these
needed cuts so that we use taxpayer dollars to invest in what works and
put our nation back on the path toward prosperity for all Americans.
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