First up, a quote from Peter Orszag, director of of the Office Of Management and Budget: "We need to protect taxpayer dollars, every dollar that goes to the wrong recipient or in the wrong amount is a dollar not available to help the unemployed worker, or to invest in education or key priorities of the administration."
Comment: I could not agree with him more. Well maybe I could. First off, maybe he is part of the problem since he knows what is going on but has obviously not done anything to stop it. Second, eliminating waste should also benefit average taxpayers by relieving their tax burden, it should not become a new cash register for the administration to start new programs that will just re-waste the savings.
Second, a quote from Senator Tom Carper, who chairs a Senate panel on Federal financial management, who worries that the $98 billion waste estimate "may still be just the tip of the iceberg" since the $98 billion number does not include some other major government spending programs.
Comment: Wow, why stop at $98 billion when we can get it over the $100 billion threshold. Think about it, Obama's official estimate of his health care reform bill is about a TRILLION dollars over ten years or about $100 billion a year. Thus, if the political class had their act together they could finance health care reform without placing any more tax burdens on any other U.S. citizen. Just for the record, I have no doubt that the official TRILLION estimate is off by at least a TRILLION dollars.
Third, another quote from Senator Carper: "It goes without saying that these results would be completely unacceptable in the private sector, as they should be in government, especially at a time of record deficits."
Comment: Not only would these results be unacceptable, they would probably be grounds for dismissal if not criminal charges. Why are people like Carper just recognizing these problems now? They have not just sprung up overnight, the political class has been asleep at the wheel and has allowed the government they are supposed to run to just waste away tremendous amounts of the nation's wealth without any ramifications for themselves or those in positions of power in the government.
Finally, according to the article and report: "under executive order, every agency would have to maintain a Web site that tracks improper payments, error rates and outstanding payments. If an agency doesn't meet targets for reducing error rates for two years in a row, the agency director and responsible official will have to directly report to OMB to explain the delinquency and new actions they will take."
Comment: Boy, that will solve the problem, a website reporting system! I don't think so. There are numerous problems with this so-called solution:
- Nothing will happen for at least two years which means another several hundred billion dollars worth of waste will occur before the remedial process even begins to kick in. The problem needs to be addressed now, not two plus years from now.
- The article does not say who will set the targets. If each agency is allowed to set its own targets, you know they will be set so that everyone in the agency looks good and the targets are easily meetable. An outside auditor group should set the targets and establish the criteria for success and failure.
- Similarly, it looks like each agency will maintain their own website and input their own data. Does anyone see the problem with this arrangement? The agency sets the goals, the agency inputs the data and the agency manages the reporting process via the agency's own website. I would have loved to have had that kind of appraisal process when I was working in corporate America, I would have been an "A" rated superstar performer every year.
All of these steps and attitudes are totally inadequate when it comes to getting wasteful spending under control. "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would address many of these problems directly and would reduce the problem far quicker and far more effectively:
Step 1 - this step puts the Federal government on an immediate financial diet with the objective of reducing Federal spending level by 50% in a five year period, setting an annual 10% reduction target. By just reducing the size of government spending, the amount of waste should also drop dramatically.
Step 34 - this step would hold Congressional members sitting on all Congressional committees and subcommittees accountable for the waste and if they failed to prevent or decrease waste according to certain standards. If they would not stem the flow of wasted dollars, they would be removed from those committee posts for incompetence. All of this waste is occurring and no one from the political class has 1) called for immediate, drastic measures to get it under control, 2) proposed drastic measures to get it under control and 3) stood up and taken responsibility for waste in the areas they are accountable for.
Step 46 - this step would impose all of the onerous reporting and accounting standards that private companies in America have to adhere to under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. This law was passed in response to the accounting shenanigans that occurred in the late 1990s by companies such as Worldcom and Enron. These procedures should be applied to Federal government spending until they have the accounting and financial discipline to not waste taxpayer money. What is good for the rest of America should be good for the government and the political class that runs that government.
Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.
No comments:
Post a Comment