The annual battle between Republicans and Democrats over federal spending continued today with the release of president Obama's latest nonsensical budget proposal. Throughout 2013, almost the only thing that we have heard from Obama about the budget has been his hysterial warnings about how sequestration would be the end of the world. Imagine, under sequestration the increase is federal spending is slowed, although spending still rises each year. Now comes a budget proposal which ends sequestration and does next to nothing to stop the quick growth of spending. Of course, the Obama budget won't pass. Over the last two years when Congress voted on the president's budget, not a single senator or congressman voted in favor of the Obama proposal. This year, the idiocy will continue.
But there is real work that could be done to reduce spending without harming the American people in any way. The non-partisan GAO just released a report detailing $95 billion of overlapping and duplicative programs run by the federal government. Simply reorganizing the government to make these programs more efficient would save just under $100 billion. (It is worth noting that the actual spending reductions in this fiscal year under sequestration will be about $45 billion, so these duplicative programs are big, big stuff.
The GAO report comes on top of two prior reports on the same topic which identified another $200 billion in savings that could be achieved by reorganizing or ending duplicative programs. That is $300 billion in total. The key here is that there is $300 billion which could easily be saved, but neither Obama nor the senate Democrats have even proposed doing anything to get these savings. This is $1000 for every man, woman and child in the country, but Obama just does not seem to care one bit about it.
Now before you decide that the supposed "savings" will hurt the poor or remove services from the needy (which would be the normal go-to response of the Democrats), let me tell you about a few of the latest items identified by the GAO.
1. There are 76 separate drug abuse prevention programs run by the government. Just consolidating all of these into one larger program would save an estimated $4.5 billion without in any way reducing the care delivered to drug addicts.
2. There are six separate programs in the defense department to redesign camoflauge uniforms for American troops. If these were combined, it would save just under $100 million.
3. The Medicare program designed to combat fraud and abuse wastes about $1.3 billion because of duplication of effort. The double effort finds no more fraud or abuse than a single system would.
4. The renewable energy programs run by the feds are wasting about $15 billion due to duplication and inefficiencies. To be clear, this duplication and inefficiency does not produce even a kilowatt of extra energy; the entire amount just goes down the drain.
There are many other examples in the GAO report. So here we have $300 billion of savings which have been identified and most of which could easily be done, and yet Obama just ignores them. Somebody has to tell Obama that not all government spending is good. Money wasted is a terrible drag on the economy. If nothing is done in response to these reports, America will just borrow another $300 billion which our children and grandchildren will need to repay. But no one will get anything in return for all that spending.
It is an outrage, a true outrage.
But there is real work that could be done to reduce spending without harming the American people in any way. The non-partisan GAO just released a report detailing $95 billion of overlapping and duplicative programs run by the federal government. Simply reorganizing the government to make these programs more efficient would save just under $100 billion. (It is worth noting that the actual spending reductions in this fiscal year under sequestration will be about $45 billion, so these duplicative programs are big, big stuff.
The GAO report comes on top of two prior reports on the same topic which identified another $200 billion in savings that could be achieved by reorganizing or ending duplicative programs. That is $300 billion in total. The key here is that there is $300 billion which could easily be saved, but neither Obama nor the senate Democrats have even proposed doing anything to get these savings. This is $1000 for every man, woman and child in the country, but Obama just does not seem to care one bit about it.
Now before you decide that the supposed "savings" will hurt the poor or remove services from the needy (which would be the normal go-to response of the Democrats), let me tell you about a few of the latest items identified by the GAO.
1. There are 76 separate drug abuse prevention programs run by the government. Just consolidating all of these into one larger program would save an estimated $4.5 billion without in any way reducing the care delivered to drug addicts.
2. There are six separate programs in the defense department to redesign camoflauge uniforms for American troops. If these were combined, it would save just under $100 million.
3. The Medicare program designed to combat fraud and abuse wastes about $1.3 billion because of duplication of effort. The double effort finds no more fraud or abuse than a single system would.
4. The renewable energy programs run by the feds are wasting about $15 billion due to duplication and inefficiencies. To be clear, this duplication and inefficiency does not produce even a kilowatt of extra energy; the entire amount just goes down the drain.
There are many other examples in the GAO report. So here we have $300 billion of savings which have been identified and most of which could easily be done, and yet Obama just ignores them. Somebody has to tell Obama that not all government spending is good. Money wasted is a terrible drag on the economy. If nothing is done in response to these reports, America will just borrow another $300 billion which our children and grandchildren will need to repay. But no one will get anything in return for all that spending.
It is an outrage, a true outrage.
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