Posted on 03/01/2011 8:06:06 AM PST by katiedidit1
A Government Accountability Office report to be released on Tuesday concludes the federal government "could potentially save billions of taxpayer dollars annually" by "reducing or eliminating duplication, overlap, or fragmentation" in federal government programs.
The report was mandated by a provision included by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., in a bill passed last year raising the federal debt ceiling. And Coburn said on Monday evening that the findings bolster his long-standing attempts to consolidate or eliminate duplicative programs.
"It makes us all look like jackasses," Coburn told reporters, arguing both the legislative and executive branches can barely track federal programs. "Anybody that says that we don't look like fools up here hasn't read the report," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at govexec.com ...
The fools are Americans that keep electing the jackwagons who keep screwing us.
For example “82 programs to improve teacher quality; 56 programs to bolster financial literacy; and more than 24 presidentially appointed individuals in several agencies with some responsibility for bio-defense.”
Are our congressmen and women insane or do they not spend enough time reading legislation and checking for duplicity?
Eliminating all these duplications could save taxpayers 200 billion dollars (minimum).
House republicans? Are you listening?
Fox News will have more on this....astounding! our tax dollars down the drain
GAO Details Billions in Federal Waste -— Report Obtained by Fox News
by Trish Turner | February 28, 2011
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) is poised to release a report Tuesday that one senator said “will make us all look like jackasses.”
“Go study that (report). It will show why we’re $14 trillion in debt,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. “Anybody that says we don’t look like fools up here hasn’t read the report.”
http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/02/28/gao-details-billions-federal-waste-report-obtained-fox
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The federal government hosts 47 job-training programs, 44 of which overlap. It runs 80 programs for the “transportation disadvantaged.”
Another 82 programs spread across 10 separate agencies endeavor to improve teacher quality — something hundreds of local school districts are already focused on.
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GAO Report...
http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=73039811-667b-4620-811a-69f7690e2360
Some more duplication, while we’re at it:
Don’t need the Dept of Education, as it duplicates (with duplicity) what states and localities do.
Don’t need the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, as it duplicates private sector broadcasting.
Teacher Quality
82 distinct programs on teacher quality. Many duplicate sub-goals (i.e., 9 of the 82 support improved teacher quality in STEM fields).
10 agencies
$4 billion (FY 2009)
Job Training and Employment (pg. 140)
47 programs offered, 44 of which overlap with at least one other program
9 agencies
$18 billion (FY 2009)
—the Grace Commission found this about fifty years ago, too—
Domestic Food Assistance (pg. 125)
18 programs
USDA, HHS, DHS
$62.5 billion (FY 2008)
increase administrative costs, which account for approximately a tenth to more than a quarter of total costs among the largest of these programs
“Little is known about the effectiveness of [11 of the 18 programs] because they have not been well studied”
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Homeless Programs (pg. 129)
20 programs
7 agencies
$2.9 billion (FY 2009)
Fragmentation has also resulted in the collection of data with limited usefulness
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Transportation for the Transportation Disadvantaged (pg. 134)
80 programs
8 agencies
FY 2010, but could not identify a funding total because agencies often do not separately track transportation costs from other program costs; (pf. 135). 23 of these programs, however, cost $1.7 billion in FY 2009.
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Food safety (pg. 8)
15 federal agencies administer over 30 food related laws
15
$1.6 billion (budget obligation for the two primary food safety agencies – FDA and USDA FSIS)
Some of the oversight doesn‘t make sense. For example, the US Farm Bill assigned the United States Department of Agriculture responsibility for monitoring catfish, thus splitting seafood oversight between USDA and FDA.
Impeaching and Removing Obama from the Presidency could save Trillions!!
They could probably combine Federal grants to colleges and universities, and Wildlife Management.
Economic Development Programs (pg. 42)
80 programs
Commerce, HUD, USDA and SBA
$6.5 billion ($3.2 of which was grants, loans guarantees and direct loans)
There are 80 programs at 4 agencies doing economic development work for the federal government; 52 of which help with entrepreneurial efforts, and 19 with tourism.
USDA Office of Rural Development, which administers 31 of the programs GAO is reviewing, has yet to implement the USDA Inspector General (IG) 2003 recommendations related to
ensuring that data exist to measure the accomplishments of one of its largest rural business programs.
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US – Mexico Border Region Water Needs (pg. 52)
7 agencies
$1.4 billion (2000-2008)
HUD provided a utility in Hudspeth County, Texas over $860,000 in grant funds from 2004 to 2006 to extend water distribution and waste collection lines for residents of a community. However, through September 2009, the distribution lines remained unused because the utility did not have enough water to serve the additional households.”
Reducing the reliance on petroleum fuel for the federal government’s vehicle fleet (pg. 55)
5 Duplicate agencies
Over 20 agencies
The federal government‘s vehicle fleet has over 600,000 civilian and nontactical military vehicles and consumes over 963,000 gallons of petroleum-based fuel per day.
In fiscal year 2009, the federal government spent approximately $1.9 billion on procuring new vehicles.
Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities (pg. 26)
Defense-wide
$6.1 billion alone for unmanned aircraft programs (2010).
Other sources of funds:
$27 billion (military intelligence program budget)
$53.1 billion (national intelligence program budget
The lack of collaboration among the services leads to higher costs.
In 2005, the Army initiated a development program with the same contractor for a variant of the Air Force Predator estimated to cost $570 million, although the predator was already successfully providing capabilities to the warfighter.
no single entity at the department level has responsibility, authority, and control over the investments to prioritize resources
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Surface Transportation Programs (pg. 48)
Over 100 separate programs
Department of Transportation
$58 billion in 2010
the number of transportation programs began to grow. This has resulted in a fragmented approach as five DOT agencies with 6,000 employees run 100 separate programs with separate funding streams for highways, transit, and rail and safety functions
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Tax expenditures (tax exclusions, credits, deductions, deferrals, and preferential tax rates) (pg. 75)
173 tax expenditures, some of which have related mission areas as spending programs.
Government-wide
Almost $1 trillion
For fiscal year 2009, the U.S. Department of the Treasury listed a total of 173 tax expenditures, some of which were the same magnitude or larger than related federal spending for some mission areas.
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Electronic health records systems for veterans, service members, and their families (pg. 79)
At least 10 systems or projects, 10 areas of business needs, and over 97 percent of functional requirements for an inpatient electronic health record system.
At least $2.6 billion over the past 13 years and more than $11.3 billion over the next 7 years.
the results of a 2008 study conducted for the departments found that over 97 percent of functional requirements for an inpatient electronic health record system are common to both departments. Nevertheless, both departments have begun separate, costly efforts to modernize their systems.
The government is lying again...This report was put out by the government...The redundancy, and duplication caused by this bloated government monster is into the trillions..
It's all about making government bigger and confiscating your money!
Overlapping, redundancy, layers upon layers of corrupt government bureaucracy just so they can take your freaking money!
IMO, this report was given in an effort to make more efficient government by reducing the number of programs. But the problem is number of departments within government. The number of programs are just the logical extension of such departments.
House republicans? Are you listening?
Gezzzz...Don't you get it? It's ALL of them...Most All these people in Congress from both parties are corrupt man!
Read the freaking article...
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