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Sequestration Solved: New GAO Report Identifies $95 Billion in Overlapping Programs

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Photo Credit: AP

Duplicative drug abuse and treatment services are strewn over 76 federal programs. Housing services are spread across 20 different agencies. Renewable energy projects go through 23 federal agencies and 130 sub-agencies.

Even federal catfish inspections are done by three different agencies. These are only a few of 162 examples identified by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog agency, of fragmented, duplicative federal programs and services.

The 2013 edition of the annual report originally requested by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, is being released today and it concludes that not only does such managerial dysfunction hobble the federal government, it’s also extraordinarily costly.

“The $95 billion in overlap identified in this report, combined with the $200 billion in overlap identified in GAO’s previous two reports, could easily cover the costs of sequestration,” Coburn told The Washington Examiner.

“Yet, instead of preventing furloughs, reopening air traffic control towers and restoring public access to White House, Congress and the administration continue to defend billions of dollars in duplication programs that are little more than monuments to the good intentions of career politicians in Washington,” he said.

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Obama Ignores Disastrous Economic News, Continues His Grand 1% Lifestyle

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Photo Credit: AP

President Obama had another tough week in a second term filled with bad news and blunders — and he’s only 10 weeks in.

While the White House suddenly decided to drop its budget Friday in an effort to control the news, there was no covering up the disastrous jobless numbers: 90 million Americans out of the workforce, the highest level since 1979; another 663,000 joining the ranks of the long-term unemployed; a measly 88,000 jobs “created.”

But what seems stuck in the craw of a lot of you readers out there was last week’s column on the Obamas’ 1 percent lifestyle — the endless ski and beach vacations for the couple and their daughters, Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s nights in London and Paris that cost you more than $1 million, even the president’s 118th round of golf while in office.

“My kids asked me a couple of years ago why we never went on family vacations,” wrote Steve Gibson. “I told them that we had to pay all of our expenses first and there wasn’t any money left over for a family vacation. Then I keep seeing … stories about the administration taking trips everywhere and I don’t know what to think. I have been laid off twice in the past year and am currently in the job search mode again.”

Eric Zundell is in the same boat: “As someone who has not been able to afford a vacation for my family in the last 12 years, (but pays his taxes;) ), I highly applaud the message delivered by your article.”

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DC Continues Its Explosive Growth

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spending

Photo Credit: 401(K) 2013

Adjusted for inflation, federal spending has gone up from an average of $882 billion every year in the 1980s to $1.48 trillion a year in the ’90s to $2.44 trillion a year in the first decade of the 21st century. It’s estimated that the government will have spent as much in the first four years of the new decade as it did in all of the 1990s.

Two crises — the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the so-called “great recession” — further propelled the growth of government in certain areas but without the commensurate cuts in other areas that earlier generations imposed in times of crisis.

“In the past when there were various crisis like World War II or the Korean War, non-defense spending was dramatically cut by 20 to 30 percent,” Schatz said. “That didn’t happen after 9/11, and it certainly didn’t happen after the financial crisis.”

Nothing typifies the expansion of government like the growing wealth of the Washington, D.C., area. The region has few natural resources and little manufacturing base to produce wealth, yet seven of the nation’s 10 richest counties surround Washington. The average government worker’s compensation now stands at over $126,000 a year. And the fact that Washington’s traffic congestion now ranks as the nation’s worst stands as more evidence of the region’s growth.

As the rest of the country suffered through the recession with layoffs and foreclosures, Washington’s work force and its home prices remained mostly stable.

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+$30.5B: Federal Spending Up, Not Down, In First 5 Months of FY13

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

Federal spending was up $30.5 billion in the first five months of fiscal 2013 compared to the first five months of fiscal 2012, according to newly released data from the U.S. Treasury.

The federal fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 and runs through Sept. 30. In the first five months of fiscal 2012 (October through February), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement, total federal spending was approximately $1,473,999,000,000.00. In the first five months of fiscal 2013, total federal spending was $1,504,547,000,000.00.

Thus, federal spending was $30,548,000,000.00 more in the first five months of fiscal 2013 than it was during the first five months of fiscal 2012.

The federal government is also spending at a much faster pace this year than it did before President Barack Obama took office.

In the first five months of fiscal 2008 (the last full fiscal year before Obama took office), the federal government spent $1,230,412,000,000.00. That is $274,315,000,000.00 less than the $1,504,547,000,000.00 that the federal government spent in the first five months of this fiscal year.

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US Has Effectively Nationalized Home Mortgage Industry

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Photo Credit: 401(K) 2013

The home mortgage sector in the world’s largest economy has been “effectively nationalized,” says George Melloan, former deputy editor of the editorial page for The Wall Street Journal.

Government agencies — primarily Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but also the Federal Housing Administration — insured or purchased more than 90 percent of home mortgages originated in 2012, a $1.3 trillion business, compared with 30 percent in 2006, according to ProPublica data.

Melloan, author of “The Great Money Binge: Spending Our Way to Socialism,” traced the situation back to the end of the last century, citing government and “powerful” lobbies.

“When President [Bill] Clinton forced the banks to begin their subprime mortgage binge in the 1990s, he called it ‘affordable housing’ for people with limited means, a politically appealing idea,” Melloan wrote in an opinion article for The Journal.

“But the real muscle came from well-heeled lobbies — the builders, real estate agents, bankers and construction-worker unions.”

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President Obama’s Sequester Strategy: Divide And Conquer

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Photo Credit: APPresident Barack Obama broke Republicans once on taxes — and his risky strategy for winning the sequester fight assumes he’ll do it again.

He will divide, isolate and defeat Republicans using all the powers of his office and all his skills as a political campaigner. As Americans grow frustrated with the cuts, Republicans will reject their party’s no-tax mantra and demand that Congress end the standoff, even if it means raising some new revenue – just the way Obama is demanding.

Obama’s trying to speed this result, by releasing state by state details of the pain and suffering the sequester will cause, all meant to get Republicans to cave. And he’s got the biggest megaphone, hammering this message over and over in a way the divided Republican party cannot.

Except that message could cut both ways. What if the public agrees that yes, there is a lot of pain and suffering – and turns to Obama wondering, why didn’t you do more to prevent it? That’s what makes some Democrats nervous about the White House’s supreme level of confidence.

Democratic lawmakers, who are unclear about the end game, could succumb to the same public offensive that Obama has been ginning up against Republicans and start demanding that the White House cut its losses and move on to other important second-term initiatives. A GOP proposal to give flexibility to the agency heads on deciding how to administer the cuts could start looking attractive to Democrats as a way out.

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Rubio: More Government Breeds More Problems (+video)

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore Responding to President Obama’s State of the Union address on behalf of the Republican Party, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., tonight made the case that the president’s calls for government investments are misguided and potentially destructive.

While agreeing with the president on some issues and taking an optimistic tone for the future, Rubio sought to offer a conservative alternative to the president’s agenda, one which takes decision-making out of Washington.

Opportunity, Rubio said, “it isn’t bestowed on us from Washington. It comes from a vibrant free economy where people can risk their own money to open a business.”

In his address before a joint session of Congress, Mr. Obama told lawmakers, “We need to build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class for all who are willing to climb them.” The president laid out a series of actions Washington can take to revive the economy, including investments in the private sector. Rubio, however, charged tonight that Mr. Obama considers a free enterprise economy as “the cause of our problems.”

“His solution to virtually every problem we face is for Washington to tax more, borrow more and spend more,” Rubio said of the president. “And the idea that more taxes and more government spending is the best way to help hardworking middle class taxpayers – that’s an old idea that’s failed every time it’s been tried. More government isn’t going to help you get ahead. It’s going to hold you back. More government isn’t going to create more opportunities. It’s going to limit them.”

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Obama Presses For New Spending, Says Gun Control Bills ‘Deserve A Vote’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: BlatantWorld.comPresident Obama, clearly emboldened off his reelection win, used his State of the Union address Tuesday night to press for more government spending, challenge Republicans over Medicare and declare that victims of gun violence “deserve a vote” on a sweeping gun control package.

In what was effectively the kick-off address of his second term, Obama largely pressed on with the policies of his first, while adding a roster of wish-list items – including a call to increase the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour, up from $7.25, and pass immigration reform.

The speech was wrapped in the theme of boosting the middle class and jolting what continues to be a tepid economic recovery. “It is our generation’s task … to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class,” Obama said.

Still, Republicans saw in his address a president clinging to ideas they have repeatedly rejected, and say do not work.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who was delivering the GOP response, said Obama’s solution “to virtually every problem we face is for Washington to tax more, borrow more and spend more.” More government, he said, will “hold you back.”

See more:

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Video: Hoyer “The Country Has A Paying For Problem,” Not A Spending Problem

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Photo Credit: Center for American Progress Action FundMICHELLE CARUSO-CABRERA: Does the country have a spending problem sir? Does the country have a spending problem?

REP. STENY HOYER (D-MD), HOUSE MINORITY WHIP: Does the country have a spending problem? The country has a paying for problem. We haven’t paid for what we bought, we haven’t paid for our tax cuts, we haven’t paid for war.

CARUSO-CABRERA: How about what we promised? Are we promising too much?

HOYER: Absolutely. If we don’t pay, we shouldn’t buy.

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Pelosi: Federal Government Doesn’t Have A Spending Problem

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Sunday downplayed concerns about federal spending levels, arguing that Republicans’ laserlike focus on budget cuts is misplaced.

“It isn’t as much a spending problem as it is priorities,” Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“It is almost a false argument to say that we have a spending problem.” she added.

Mrs. Pelosi, a former House speaker, also warned against the looming sequester cuts, saying Congress must work with the White House to avoid those reductions, calling them “something that should be out of the question.”

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