(Washington, D.C.) – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today expressed support for the recommendations in the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) third annual report on duplicative federal programs, which was published this morning.  The report, titled “Actions Needed to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial Benefits,” identifies 17 areas of “fragmentation, overlap, and duplication” where federal programs could be made more efficient and 14 “opportunities for potential cost saving or revenue enhancements.”  GAO also announced that it has launched an online, searchable “Action Tracker” for following the implementation status of each recommendation.

GAO found extensive fragmentation and duplication across 679 renewable energy initiatives implemented by 23 different agencies, including 82 for wind energy alone.  In one instance, the same recipient received financial support from seven wind energy programs for the same project.  Export promotion was also cited by GAO.  The Department of the Treasury, the Small Business Administration, and the Export-Import Bank spent a combined $350 million on export promotion in fiscal year 2011. GAO found overlap that can be “confusing for small businesses,” which often cannot “determine what each federal entity does.” 

In regard to potential cost savings, GAO recommended limiting payments to farmers under the Department of Agriculture’s much-maligned crop insurance program, which is expected to cost taxpayers an average of $8.9 billion per year over the coming decade.  GAO pointed out that federal crop insurance “has come under increased scrutiny because of the nation’s budgetary pressures, particularly when farm income is at record high levels.”  In the area of information technology, GAO reviewed seven agencies and 20 plans for the transition to cloud computing, which is required under the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Cloud First policy.  The report noted that seven of the 20 plans had failed to include cost estimates, 11 contained no performance goals, and 14 left out plans to retire legacy systems.  GAO recommended that chief information officers at the seven agencies take action to complete their Cloud First plans if the opportunity “to achieve significant cost savings” is to be realized. 

“It has long been clear to anyone paying attention that there is much room for improvement within the federal government, but GAO has once again done taxpayers a great service by identifying practical, achievable goals for cutting down on government waste,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.  “Many of the recommendations in this year’s report have been explicitly endorsed by CAGW in the past, and we welcome GAO’s rigorously-researched, data-driven support.  All the same, it is hard not to be frustrated by the fact that these recommendations have been largely ignored by Congress despite estimates from Senators Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) that GAO’s first two annual reports identified $400 billion per year in overlap and duplication.”

“Nonetheless, CAGW has been fighting to eliminate duplication and waste by publishing its Congressional Pig Book and Prime Cuts databases.  Taxpayers can count on CAGW to continue to shed light on opportunities to lighten the big-government load in the future,” Schatz concluded. 

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