For Immediate Release November 7, 2012

Contact:  Leslie K. Paige 202-467-5334 Luke Gelber 202-467-5318

CAGW Congratulates President Obama; Urges Fiscally Conservative Agenda

(Washington, D.C.) – Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) congratulated President Obama for his victorious re-election campaign and urged the President to set an aggressive waste-cutting agenda for his next four years in office.

“President Obama deserves to be congratulated for running a highly effective campaign during a difficult time for any incumbent. From the perspective of a taxpayer watchdog group that concerns itself chiefly with what has become, by any measure, a bloated and overgrown federal government, the last four years have gone from bad to worse,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz. “Slow economic growth and high deficit spending have added to the burden of debt that will be shouldered by future generations, a demographic that did not get a chance to vote last night.

“There have been some important steps forward during the Obama presidency, such as the almost complete elimination of earmarks from congressional spending bills, the defunding of the alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and the passage of free trade deals with Columbia, Panama, and South Korea. But, if President Obama hopes to keep his promise to ‘fight for new jobs and new opportunity and new security for the middle class,’ he will have to get serious about reducing spending, and in particular, address entitlement reform.

“At its current rate of expansion, the federal budget will reach $4 trillion in fiscal year 2015, at which point it will have doubled in roughly a decade. Yet it is unclear that the President has any clear plan for how to slow the growth of spending. His acceptance speech was utterly devoid of any detailed plans to rein in wasteful spending or to give taxpayers a better return on their ‘investment.’ Instead, as President Obama finishes his first term and awaits his second, the federal government is careening toward sequestration and the ‘fiscal cliff,’ an outcome that the President has said he hopes to avoid, but for which he has presented no alternative other than more rhetoric.

“Ultimately, the responsibility for avoiding the combination of across-the-board spending cuts and tax hikes that comprise the fiscal cliff falls to Congress, but President Obama’s passivity has been jarring. For a man who was adamant that the country could not survive without fiscal stimulus back in 2009, the specter of a huge tax hike should be terrifying during this sluggish recovery. CAGW recommends that President Obama start the ball rolling on his new fiscally conservative agenda by proposing that Congress agree to the recommendations in CAGW’s Prime Cuts, which would save $1.8 trillion over five years. In addition, the President should support the elimination of the duplication and overlap identified in two annual reports by the Government Accountability Office in 2011 and 2012. According to Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), adoption of the GAO’s proposals would save $400 billion annually.

“On the campaign trail, President Obama asked for a second chance. His first four years were marred by massive deficits, low economic growth, and high unemployment, but the American people have spoken, and the balance of power in Washington looks very similar to the President’s first term. For the results to be different, he must be different,” Schatz concluded.

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