TAXPAYER WATCHDOG GROUP HAILS POLL FAVORING SPENDING CUTS | Citizens Against Government Waste

TAXPAYER WATCHDOG GROUP HAILS POLL FAVORING SPENDING CUTS

Press Release

For Immediate ReleaseContact: Jim Campi or Aaron Taylor
November 10, 1999(202) 467-5300

(Washington, D.C.) — The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW), America’s largest taxpayer watchdog group, today joined congressional leaders in hailing new polling data indicating that the vast majority of Americans believe that more than one penny of every tax dollar is squandered in waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement.

While Congress has called for a .97 percent across-the-board cut, CCAGW has found that even deeper cuts can be made without sacrificing essential functions.  CCAGW has repeatedly called on the President to cut the waste, fraud, and abuse throughout the federal bureaucracy in order to insure the integrity of the current surplus in the Social Security trust fund. 

“America knows that Washington wastes billions of dollars every year,” said CCAGW President Thomas Schatz.  “Cutting less than one percent out of the budget is child’s play.  If the President has trouble figuring out where to make the cuts, I’d be happy to send him Prime Cuts and Pig Book, two excellent sources we publish every year detailing the waste, fraud, and abuse endemic in nearly every government agency.”

For example, the 1999 Prime Cuts Catalog recommends reducing bureaucracy and eliminating uneccessary positions in the Department of Interior.  This common-sense  reform would save the taxpayers $45 million in the first year alone, and $256 million over five years.

In the arena of pork-barrel spending, 1999 Pig Book Summary calls for the elimination of the National Center for Cool and Cold Water Aquaculture in West Virginia.  $15.9 million dollars has gone to this project since 1995, and construction has not even begun.  For this and many other pork-barrel projects in West Virginia, we can thank Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the first Billion Dollar Man in Pig Book history.

“We've been telling the President that an across-the-board cut is the best way to eliminate wasteful spending.  Now that it's in a poll, maybe he'll pay attention,” Schatz concluded.

CCAGW is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, a 600,000 member nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.