(Washington, D.C.) – At a press conference today on Capitol Hill, the country's premier waste-fighting group, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW), joined Senator Rod Grams (R-Minn.) and Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) in calling for the elimination of the Department of Energy (DOE).

"CCAGW is relentlessly pursuing the elimination of wasteful and obsolete federal agencies, and DOE is certainly near the top of our list," said CCAGW President Tom Schatz.  "The Grams-Tiahrt plan eliminates a bureaucratic monster by transferring authority to a new Energy Programs Resolution Agency, terminating non-essential programs in the process.  The Grams-Tiahrt proposal will save taxpayers $20 billion over the next five years.”

According to the General Accounting Office (GAO), the twenty-year-old Energy Department has spent tens of billions of dollars on unclear or changing missions.  From 1980 through 1996, DOE conducted 80 projects that were considered “major system acquisitions.”  Thirty-one of those projects were terminated before completion, after expenditures of more than $10 billion.

“Taxpayers cannot afford to pay for flawed federal government projects that are never completed,” said Schatz.  “It is time to downsize major portions of the federal government, and the Energy Department is a good place to start,” Schatz concluded.

CCAGW is a 600,000-member lobbying organization dedicated to seeking enactment of legislation to eliminate waste, inefficiency, mismanagement and abuse in the federal government.  CCAGW has supported previous attempts by Congress to eliminate DOE.

For more information or to arrange interviews, please contact Jim Campi at (202) 467-5300.