Waste-Cutting Agenda Should Be Priority # 1

(Washington, D.C.) - As the 44th President-elect of the United States, Barack Obama has achieved an historic victory.  Upon his inauguration in January, he will inherit a troubled economy, a global war on terror, boots-on-the-ground wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and a bloated bureaucracy rife with inefficient, wasteful, and outdated programs.  He will also be working with larger Democratic majorities in Congress.  Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) encourages President-elect Obama to capitalize on his victory and his new leverage in Congress to begin refashioning the federal bureaucracy into a smaller, more efficient entity for the 21st century.

"President-elect Obama said repeatedly on the campaign trail that he would go through the federal budget, line item by line item, and eliminate wasteful programs.  Since he has called for bipartisanship, his first order of business should be to appoint an independent commission to conduct such a review.  The commission would recommend ways to clean up the mess in Washington and save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars annually," said CAGW President Tom Schatz.

"We also encourage President-elect Obama to reject Congress' rampant pork-barrel spending and to enforce the executive order on earmarks signed by President Bush on January 29, 2008.  As a candidate, President-elect Obama proposed to knock wasteful congressional earmarks back to the 1994 level of $7.8 billion.  While CAGW would prefer no earmarks, reducing the cost from $17.2 billion in fiscal 2008 to $7.8 billion would be a positive step forward in the battle against this form of wasteful spending.  In addition, as a candidate, the President-elect proposed a number of commonsense management reforms, and CAGW would support those proposals that would make the government more efficient and effective."

The budget deficit in fiscal 2008 was a record $445 billion, and could more than double to $1 trillion in fiscal 2009.  This will affect the president-elect's plans to increase spending and raise taxes.  "When campaign rhetoric meets cold fiscal reality, President-elect Obama will have to consider all possible methods to restrain spending, including an across-the-board spending freeze, which he rejected in the last presidential debate.  While he won the election, he did not win a mandate to raise taxes to pay for new spending programs.  Taxpayers are looking for change, which includes less wasteful spending, not higher taxes," added Schatz.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.