Citizens Against Government Waste America's #1 Taxpayer Watchdog

Today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its annual Budget and Economic Outlook for 2018 to 2028.  In order to include several important pieces of budget and spending legislation that passed recently, particularly the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the Bipartisan Budget Act, and the Omnibus Appropriations package, CBO pushed its usual January release date to April.

In 2018, Republicans have done little to separate themselves from Democrats when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars.  On February 9, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 eviscerated the last semblance of fiscal responsibility in Washington, the 2011 Budget Control Act, by allowing spending caps to increase by $300 billion over the next two years.  As a follow up on March 23, with less than 24 hours of review, Congress blindly

The Earmark Elimination Act—H.R. 5369—would prohibit the House from considering any legislation containing earmarks, and it would strip any earmarks found in a bill being considered by the House before it could proceed.

The concept that federal information technology (IT) procurement should be technology and vendor neutral is among the best practices for federal government agencies.  However, when a large federal agency issues an exceptionally large cloud contract to a predetermined vendor for a specific technology solution without competitive bidding, such a contract is neither technology nor vendor neutral.  A Department of Defense (DOD) contract to fix its agency-wide cloud problem is such a case.

As Congress stares down yet another funding deadline on March 23, 2018, discussion over the $900 million earmark has resurfaced.