General Waste

Just five days after his historic election, President-elect Obama vowed to review every Executive Order signed by President Bush during the past eight years.  He made it clear that he intends to overturn some of them.

The President-elect should take his time during his review, as some Executive Orders are quite worthwhile.  For example, on June 30, 1982, President Ronald Reagan issued Executive Order 12369, establishing the President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, and asked private businessman J. Peter Grace to chair what has become popularly known as the Grace Commission.  One hundred and sixty-one top executives, assisted by 2,000 volunteers from the private sector, contributed more than $75 million worth of their time and resources to examine all major federal programs and agencies.  In January 1984, the Grace Commission’s work culminated in a 47-volume report containing 2,478 recommendations to save taxpayers $424.4 billion over three years.

With the election on November 4^th looming, both Presidential candidates have pledged to go through the budget line by line to find wasteful spending.  Whoever wins could save a lot of time by reading Citizens Against Government Waste’s 2008 Prime Cuts, a list of 700 recommendations that would save $27 billion on one year and $1.2 trillion over five years.  The new President will inherit a $455 billion deficit from fiscal year 2008 and be staring at a possible $1 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2009.  There’s no room for new programs and plenty of incentive to cut those that are ineffective, duplicative, or wasteful. 

Voter registration and vote fraud is once again front and center as November 4 approaches.  As in previous elections, the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now, or ACORN, is at the center of political and legal storms. 

Apparently, the federal government has an aversion to commitment, at least in terms of property.  According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released on January 24, 2008, for the first time in history the federal government is predicted to lease more property than it owns.  Based upon information gathered from the General Services Administration (GSA), which handles many of the government’s leases, from 2003 to 2006, federally-leased space increased from 160 million square feet to 172 million square feet; conversely, federally-owned space decreased from 180 million square feet to 174 million square feet.

In the wake of the March 13 vote on a one-year moratorium on congressional earmarks, it is time for a post-mortem on who said what in the heat of the battle.  The amendment, offered by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) to the fiscal year 2009 budget resolution, failed by a vote of 29-71.  But the earmark fight is far from over; the comments made by the appropriations cardinals and various earmark apologists are fodder for future skirmishes.