Report finds hundreds of duplicative government programs, costing billions

Report finds hundreds of duplicative government programs, costing billions

www.cbsnews.com

The federal government could save billions in taxpayer dollars annually by consolidating duplicative government programs, according to a new report.

The newly-released report from the Government Accountability Office "makes us all look like jackasses," Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) told reporters Monday night.

The conservative senator said the report -- which identifies redundancies in more than 546 individual programs -- reveals why the United States is $14 trillion in debt.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I would love to say this was a surprise, but I cannot. This report wins the "Duh, No Kidding" award of the week. lol

Our politicians have not met a new regulation/department/program they didn't like, and will vote for anything that they can pin their name on saying "I helped you by creating this X" Whatever X may be...you fill in the blank.

They never seem to even pay attention to whether someone is already doing that job before they create entire bureaucracies for their pet projects.

Some bureaucracy is needed, but as the saying goes, "Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy"

Maybe the politicians need to learn to use the "search" button...lol

www.cbsnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

This is what happens when the establishment relies upon a bureaucracy driven by political parties.

First - it's all about 'expedience'
Second - it's all about currying favors. bartering concessions, and pandering
Third - it's all about the 'continuity' of their 'governance'

Notice how accountability, and oversight don't fit in the big picture.

The only happy side of this is the joy of watching the political machinery realize that we know the emperor has no clothes while they continue to pretend he does....

We may have been fools to trust them... but they are clowns for thinking they matter.

reply to post by BomSquad


Jackasses exposed huh?

reply to post by colbyforce


Apparently a direct quote from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) describing himself and his fellow Senators....and I can't say I disagree with his assessment.

reply to post by Maxmars


You registered on my ATS 3 year anniversary! How nice!

Sorry, I couldn't resist...

reply to post by BomSquad


The GAO identified 33 areas with "overlap or fragmentation" in the federal government.
I guess if we want to grow government even more we just need to increase that number to
45 areas with "overlap or fragmentation". Yes, of course it is wasteful but who cares???
Lets grow government and create jobs!
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The best part.....- no accountability - !

More specifics here:Waste - Fraud - Abuse


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I like this one the best: We have 15 Agencies administering 30 food - related laws.
"Some of the oversight doesn't make any sense."

It's hard to fire someone who is actually told to do things that don't make any sense.
Lets just get rid of just 1 of those 15 Agencies and see what happens.

The newly-released report from the Government Accountability Office "makes us all look like jackasses," Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) told reporters Monday night.

Yeah, like they need help for that.

the only thing that will save us from the beurocracy is it's inefficiency

I'm tired of the media telling me how bright Obama is, how he's brilliant. If that's the case, why has he increased the federal payroll by 100,000 more employees since taking office? Oh, I know, we really need THESE new workers, because he's so brilliant we must need them. Obama is trying to break the system. He's a fraud, because if he really cared about the future of this country, this is the first thing he would have addressed before creating one more govt. job.

Once the govt starts an agency or program it will most likely NEVER go away. That's you end up with 100's of duplicates. The same principle applies to laws in our country. Just enforce the ones we already have and stop passing new ones!

reply to post by BomSquad


Obviously this is no surprise. It is in reality, much worse than simply redundant programs.

Governments (like many large corporations) are based on an incremental budget model, which suggests that every year the budget will increase by some given amount. In the corporate world, firms that practice this model have the incremental budget increase when ever the firm is within a certain range of their annual growth projection, say +/- 3%. Now if the firm does not hit that target, say - 4 to 5 % their budgets might be flat. Below that and the budgets might be cut.

The folk who do the forecasting are pretty good, so typically the budgets increase every year. At the end of the year, folks scramble to spend the balance of their budgets so that they will have even more money in the subsequent year. In both the government and corporate worlds, budget dollars = power. Third party providers, like IBM are highly incented to facilite this as they are compensated on an annual basis, so they will do amazing things to book sales prior to the end of the year. Accountants on both side work like dogs to see how much can be brought forward to the current calandar year to be booked to meet the budget limits.

Firms that are well managed do a $0 based budget, meaning each year your budget is $0 and every dollar has to be rejustified. This might be done every two years, but the concept is the same. You have to quantitatively demonstrate why you need cash for people, infrastructure, everything. Firms like this deliver rewards and power to executives who can run within quality ranges on less money. You get a larger bonus when you turn money back to the corporation. It is exactly the opposite.

The government obviously uses the incremental budget model. Nothing in the government is ever $0 based. Where the problem gets worse is that there is no shared infrastructure within the government. There are common functions all over the government that are duplicative, regardless of whether the functions within the departments they support are duplicative. Examples include things like call centers, data centers, fullfillment, both print and web, networks. Hundreds of billions of dollars spent duplicating operational functions where some reasonable systems development could provide the infrastructure to deliver common infrastructure which differentiates as the functions differentiate.

If you moved to a $0 based budgeting model on a bi-annual basis and put a team of world class private sector folks on consolidating infrastructure you would save hundreds of billions/year. The common infrastructure should obviously be outsourced (not off-shored, but given to a private sector company to run). Running a network or a data center is in no way a core competency of the government, yet we run thousands. The outsource provider has every reason to consolidate the infrastructure as it improves their margins. Outsourcing it also takes those employees off the government books, eliminating the need to provide for pensions, medical, etc. Does that mean that the folks lose those benefits? Absolutely not. Providing those benefits to employees who move from the government to a private sector firm could be a mandate within the contract. Believe me - there is so much waste within the government that a private company would eliminate that they could still make a healthy margin. Would a ton of jobs be made redundant and eliminated? No doubt, but that is the fault of the government, not the private party. Its the government's fault because those are folks who should not have been hired in the first place.

This is not rocket science. It is competent management and the lack of it is why most folks think the management of the government is wholly incompetent. They think it is because it is. It is because they are spending your money and as long as you're working and sending these jokers cash every payday, there is an endless supply of it.

reply to post by dillweed


Hiring 100,000 new government employees is really the only way that the government can demonstrably and directly create jobs. Government de-regulation and lowering taxes can remove impediments preventing the private sector from hiring employees, but there is almost no direct way for the government to create private sector jobs.

reply to post by dolphinfan


I often ran into the "spend all the money or we'll get less next year" mentality when I was in the Army and after I joined corporate life.

Now with the company I currently work for, we go through a justification process to get items added to the budget on an annual basis, but that does not mean we are actually going to purchase those items. That just means that the money is set aside in the budget. Then, when it comes time to implement the project, we have to go through the entire justification process again before the project is allowed to proceed.

We might base our budget request on what we spent last year, but that does not mean we are going to get that same amount the following year without going through the justification process. This does sound like the $0 accounting you are talking about, please correct me if I am wrong.

This does sound like a sound way to do the budget to me...if only we could get our politicians to think that way as well. It sounds like we should hire some accountants to run the budget instead of the politicians. lol