Vice President Joe Biden holds a cabinet meeting on the campaign to cut waste, in room 430 of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House, December 13, 2011. Pictured are (from left) Deputy Attorney General James Cole, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner, and OMB Director Jack Lew. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)

When is the last time you used a dollar coin? If you’re like most Americans, it’s been a while.

Back in 2005, Congress enacted the Presidential $1 Coin Act, which mandated that the US Mint issue new Presidential $1 Coins with the likeness of every deceased President. The only problem: nobody wants to use them. As a result, more than 40 percent (or 1.3 billion) of the Presidential coins that the US Mint has issued are sitting in storage at the Federal Reserve – enough to meet demand for more than a decade. And until today, the Mint was set to produce another 1.6 billion coins through 2016. That’s why Vice President Biden and Secretary Geithner announced at today’s Cabinet meeting that the Administration will stop the wasteful production of excess $1 coins for circulation, and will produce only a small number to be sold to collectors as required by law – but at no cost to taxpayers. Overall, this change will save at least $50 million annually over the next several years.

President Obama is deeply committed to cutting waste, and this is one of many initiatives being taken across the Federal government as part of the ongoing Campaign to Cut Waste launched by the President and Vice President in June. At today’s meeting, the Vice President and Deputy Attorney General James Cole also announced that in fiscal year 2011, the Department of Justice recovered over $5.6 billion from individuals or entities attempting to defraud the U.S. government– a new record and an increase of over 167 percent since 2008 that includes both civil and criminal fraud. Of the $5.6 billion recovered by DOJ this year, more than $2.9 billion was from health care fraud alone -- driven in part by unprecedented cooperation between DOJ and the Department of Health and Human Services to detect and halt fraud earlier. Together, they’ve expanded the use of Medicare Fraud Strike Forces that monitor Medicare data in real time and work together to prosecute fraud more quickly.  It now often takes months, not years, to bring a fraud case to resolution. And for every dollar spent on this effort, the Administration has recovered seven dollars. That’s why since 2009, the Administration has recovered $15 billion.

Finally, Vice President Biden and Secretary Sebelius announced additional steps the Administration is taking to crack down on Medicare fraud by targeting prescription drugs. Patients sometimes “doctor shop,” visiting numerous doctors to get multiple prescriptions for OxyContin, Percocet, and other painkillers and narcotics that can then be sold or abused. Prescription drug fraud has serious human and financial costs. The Government Accountability Office recently reported that “170,000 Medicare beneficiaries received prescriptions from five or more” doctors for these kinds of drugs. That’s why today, HHS issued guidance urging insurance companies to prevent such fraud by withholding payment on suspicious claims and activity.

Together, today’s announcements mark another important milestone in the Administration’s efforts to root out waste and eliminate fraud wherever we find it. And under the leadership of President Obama and Vice President Biden, that’s an effort we’re committed to building on in the coming months and years.

Jack Lew is Director of the Office of Management and Budget 

The health of our economy depends on what we do right now to create the conditions where businesses can hire and middle-class families can feel a basic measure of economic security. In the long run, our prosperity also depends on our ability to pay down the massive debt the federal government has accumulated over the past decade. Today, the President sent to the Joint Committee his plan to jumpstart economic growth and job creation now – and to lay the foundation for it to continue for years to come.

The President’s Plan for Economic Growth and Deficit Reduction lives up to a simple idea: as a Nation, we can live within our means while still making the investments we need to prosper – from a jobs bill that is needed right now to long-term investments in education, innovation, and infrastructure. It follows a balanced approach: asking everyone to do their part, so no one has to bear all the burden.  And it says that everyone – including millionaires and billionaires – has to pay their fair share.

Overall, it pays for the American Jobs Act and produces net savings of more than $3 trillion over the next decade, on top of the roughly $1 trillion in spending cuts that the President already signed into law in the Budget Control Act – for a total savings of more than $4 trillion over the next decade. This would bring the country to a place, by 2017, where current spending is no longer adding to our debt, debt is falling as a share of the economy, and deficits are at a sustainable level.

Now, let me review some of its main components.

First, the plan includes the American Jobs Act – a set of ideas supported by both Democrats and Republicans that will put people back to work and put more money in the pockets of working Americans. It’s imperative that we pass this bill now both to get the economy moving again and creating jobs at the pace we need it, and to help with deficit reduction since a growing economy is a vital part to reducing our deficits and debt.

Second, the plan lays out a way to live within our means so that we can invest in the things that will power economic growth for decades to come: education, innovation, clean energy, and infrastructure. To do this, it follows a balanced approach to deficit reduction by drawing from across the Budget for savings and by asking everyone to pay their fair share.

Specifically, the President is proposing approximately $580 billion in cuts and reforms to a wide range of mandatory programs from cuts to agricultural subsidies that are no longer necessary to reform of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and modest changes to federal civilian worker retirement and health benefits for military retirees.

In health care programs, the President is recommending a series of reforms that builds on the historic savings and reforms in the Affordable Care Act to strengthen Medicare and Medicaid so that these vital programs are robust and healthy to serve Americans for years to come.

These proposals will save $248 billion in Medicare and $72 billion in Medicaid and other health programs over 10 years, and extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by three years. This is accomplished in a way that does not shift risks unfairly onto the individuals they serve; slash benefits; or undermine the fundamental compact they represent to our Nation’s seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income families. Any savings that affect beneficiaries do not begin until 2017 and do not affect middle-income and current beneficiaries. Other health and Medicaid savings amount to $72 billion, and because of the structural nature of these reforms to both programs, health savings grow to over $1 trillion in the second decade. Moreover, as he said today, the President will veto any bill that takes one dime from the Medicare benefits seniors rely on without asking the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share.

The President’s plan reflects the Administration’s current policy of drawing down our troop presence in Afghanistan and the transition from a military to a civilian-led mission in Iraq for a savings of $1 trillion.

Finally, the President calls on the Committee to undertake comprehensive tax reform and lays out five key principles. Reform should: 1) lower tax rates; 2) cut wasteful loopholes and tax breaks; 3) reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion; 4) boost job creation and growth; and 5) comport with the “Buffett Rule” that people making more than $1 million a year should not pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle-class families pay.

To advance this debate, the President is offering a detailed set of specific tax loophole closers and measures to broaden the tax base that, together with the expiration of the high-income tax cuts, would be more than sufficient to hit the $1.5 trillion target for additional revenue. These measures include cutting tax preferences for high-income households, eliminating tax breaks for oil and gas companies, closing the carried interest loophole for investment fund managers, and eliminating benefits for those who own corporate jets.

We have little doubt that some of these proposals will not be popular with many of those who benefit from these affected programs and currently enjoy special tax breaks. These are tough choices that we had to make -- and some of these changes we are only putting forward to address our fiscal situation. But we are all in this together, and all of us must contribute to getting our economy moving again and on a firm fiscal footing.

If we don’t take a balanced approach to deficit reduction that includes asking the wealthiest 2 percent of families and big corporations to pay their fair share, then everyone else must shoulder the load. That could mean drastic cuts to things like education, research and development, infrastructure, and food safety; and could mean severe cuts to Medicare that would burden seniors with thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs.

Second, if we do nothing, our economy will not get the jolt it needs now and it will be weighed down by our debt or years to come. If we don’t take these steps now, it will only get harder.

I’ve been working on these issues for three decades, and I can tell you that making these changes in this plan will require some tough choices. Everyone will have a cut or a new policy that they do not like – or wish that they could avoid. But remember: the challenge we face is one that we all face – together – as Americans. We are in this together, and the only way that we can have a balanced approach is that we all do our part.

So read the plan, and join the debate about how we can jumpstart our economy, reduce our deficit, and win the future.

When he launched the Campaign to Cut Waste in June, President Obama asked the Vice President to take on a new role holding the Cabinet accountable for cutting waste in their agencies to help make government more efficient and responsive to the American people. As a part of that effort, the Vice President today convened the first Cabinet waste reduction meeting and announced over $2 billion in anti-waste measures.

In these challenging budgetary times, ensuring that every agency is rooting out waste and saving taxpayer dollars is more important than ever. We have made great strides in the last two years – shrinking contract spending for the first time in 13 years, identifying $3 billion in cost reductions from IT projects across government, and getting rid of property we no longer need and working aggressively to realize the President’s goal of saving $3 billion in real estate costs by the year 2012 – but we must continue to be vigilant and innovative about driving efficiency. That’s why the President and Vice President have made the Campaign to Cut Waste an Administration-wide priority.

Joined by agency leaders from across the government, the Vice President announced a new initiative to fight waste in health care, unveiled efforts to track state progress in reducing improper Unemployment Insurance payments, and directed Cabinet Secretaries to undertake waste and efficiency reviews that will target unnecessary, wasteful, and inefficient federal spending.

The Vice President and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius discussed a new initiative to fight waste and fraud in Medicaid. HHS today released its final rule for the Medicaid Recovery Audit Contractor Program, a waste-cutting program created by the Affordable Care Act that’s projected to save $2.1 billion over the next five years – $900 million of which will be returned to states. The new program is based on the successful Medicare Recovery Audit Contractor program, which the Vice President announced has already recovered nearly $670 million to date in 2011 – increasing the taxpayer dollars recovered by nearly 800% compared to 2010.

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis joined with the Vice President to discuss new Labor Department plans to reduce improper Unemployment Insurance payments by strengthening accountability for states. These efforts include launching a new transparency initiative to show where states stand on improper payments, working with high priority states to develop comprehensive turnaround plans to reduce improper payments, and awarding grants to states to implement waste-cutting initiatives and improve the Unemployment Insurance program.

As part of the Administration’s efforts to cut wasteful and inefficient spending, the Vice President also asked today’s meeting attendees to report back on wasteful spending practices at each of their agencies.  He praised Secretary Napolitano and cited the Department of Homeland Security’s Efficiency Review as a model effort, and called on every Cabinet Secretary to be personally involved and invested in these reviews.

By holding these regular cabinet meetings, the Vice President is making clear that each member of the Cabinet is going to be held accountable for both the dollars they spend and making government work more efficiently. Jeff Zients, Deputy Director for Management and Chief Performance Officer, and I are committed to partnering with the agencies as they redouble their efforts.

In these challenging budgetary times, ensuring that every agency is rooting out waste and saving taxpayer dollars is more important than ever. We have made great strides in the last two years – shrinking contract spending for the first time in 13 years, identifying $3 billion in cost reductions from IT projects across government, and getting rid of property we no longer need and working aggressively to realize the President’s goal of saving $3 billion in real estate costs by the year 2012 – but we must continue to be vigilant and innovative about driving efficiency. That’s why the President and Vice President have made the Campaign to Cut Waste an Administration-wide priority.

Joined by agency leaders from across the government, the Vice President announced a new initiative to fight waste in health care, unveiled efforts to track state progress in reducing improper Unemployment Insurance payments, and directed Cabinet Secretaries to undertake waste and efficiency reviews that will target unnecessary, wasteful, and inefficient federal spending.

The Vice President and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius discussed a new initiative to fight waste and fraud in Medicaid. HHS today released its final rule for the Medicaid Recovery Audit Contractor Program, a waste-cutting program created by the Affordable Care Act that’s projected to save $2.1 billion over the next five years – $900 million of which will be returned to states. The new program is based on the successful Medicare Recovery Audit Contractor program, which the Vice President announced has already recovered nearly $670 million to date in 2011 – increasing the taxpayer dollars recovered by nearly 800% compared to 2010.

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis joined with the Vice President to discuss new Labor Department plans to reduce improper Unemployment Insurance payments by strengthening accountability for states. These efforts include launching a new transparency initiative to show where states stand on improper payments, working with high priority states to develop comprehensive turnaround plans to reduce improper payments, and awarding grants to states to implement waste-cutting initiatives and improve the Unemployment Insurance program.

As part of the Administration’s efforts to cut wasteful and inefficient spending, the Vice President also asked today’s meeting attendees to report back on wasteful spending practices at each of their agencies.  He praised Secretary Napolitano and cited the Department of Homeland Security’s Efficiency Review as a model effort, and called on every Cabinet Secretary to be personally involved and invested in these reviews.

By holding these regular cabinet meetings, the Vice President is making clear that each member of the Cabinet is going to be held accountable for both the dollars they spend and making government work more efficiently. Jeff Zients, Deputy Director for Management and Chief Performance Officer, and I are committed to partnering with the agencies as they redouble their efforts.

Jack Lew is Director of the Office of Management and Budget

While we disagree with the approach that Speaker Boehner chose to take in this bill, there is one thing that we all still agree on, and that is the size of the problem. Both the House Republican budget proposal unveiled by Congressman Ryan on April 5 and the President’s fiscal framework that he introduced on April 13, set as our goal deficit reduction of $4 trillion. Since both of these plans were introduced before the agreement on appropriations for FY 2011, the baseline used for them did not reflect the spending cuts enacted this year in that legislation. Indeed, throughout our weeks of talks, all parties have worked off a January baseline because we all recognized that we needed to start from the same place.

That is why it would be confusing to judge the current proposal’s savings from the “adjusted March 2011 baseline” which CBO released in May. Conveniently, CBO notes the January baseline numbers in its analysis, and pegs the savings from the Boehner plan at $1.1 trillion. Furthermore, an additional adjustment was also assumed in the talks for the projected costs of Pell Grants under a special Congressional rule. That adjustment brings the savings up to $1.2 trillion. 

Don’t get me wrong: there is a lot in Speaker Boehner’s plan that we do not like and actively oppose. But, as this debate continues and intensifies in the coming days, it’s important that we compare apples to apples, and make sure that we are all understanding the facts.

Jack Lew is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget

This is the seventh Budget that I have worked on at OMB, and it may be the most difficult. It includes more than $1 trillion in deficit reduction – two-thirds from spending cuts -- and puts the nation on a path toward fiscal sustainability so that by the middle of the decade, the government will no longer be adding to our national debt as a share of the economy and will be paying for what it spends – and will be able to sustain that for many years afterwards.  

The President has called this budget a down payment because we will still have work to do to pay down the debt and address our long-term challenges. But it is a necessary and critical step for we cannot start to move toward balance and to cutting into the size of our debt until we first stop adding to it – and that is what this Budget does. 

It lays out a strategy for significant deficit reduction – the most deficit reduction in a comparable period since the end of World War II – that will bring our deficit down to about 3 percent of the economy by the middle of the decade and maintain it there for the rest of the budget window. Changing the trajectory of our fiscal path is a significant accomplishment, but to do this, it will take some tough choices. Let me highlight a few of them:

The Budget includes a five-year non-security discretionary spending freeze that will reduce the deficit by over $400 billion over the next decade and bring this spending to the lowest level since President Eisenhower sat in the Oval Office. To achieve savings of this magnitude it is not enough to cut programs that are outdated, ineffective, or duplicative – though that is where we need to start.  It is also necessary to make cuts in places that, absent the fiscal situation, we would not reduce – such as energy assistance and community development grants for cities and counties.

In national security, which we are not freezing, we also are making real cuts. Defense spending has been growing faster than inflation for more than a decade, and we can no longer afford to stay on that path.

The Budget cuts $78 billion from the Pentagon’s spending plan over the next five years, bringing defense spending down to zero real growth. It cuts weapons programs that Secretary Gates and the military leadership say we do not need and which we cannot afford. We are also capturing the savings that come from bringing our troops home from Iraq, which when added in brings defense spending down by more than 5 percent from the President’s FY 2011 request.

Of course, cutting discretionary spending alone will not solve our fiscal problems. This Budget also deals with mandatory spending and revenue and takes significant steps to address our long-term fiscal challenges.

For example, this budget shows how we can pay for solutions to two problems that we have been too willing to kick down the road by putting on the national credit card: preventing a nearly 30 percent cut in reimbursements to doctors in Medicare to keep doctors in the system treating patients; and preventing an increase in taxes on middle-class families through the Alternative Minimum Tax or AMT.

In December, there was a bipartisan agreement to pay for a one-year extension of the so-called “doc fix” – which was not required by budget rules but was the right thing to do. Building on that, our budget identifies $62 billion of specific health savings to pay for the next two years of this fix – establishing a clear pattern that, consistent with our budget, this needs to be paid for in the future.

With regard to the AMT, we pay for three years of a patch by limiting the amount those in the highest tax bracket can receive for their itemized tax deductions. By bringing the rate back to where it was in the Reagan Administration, this is the biggest reduction in revenue-side spending in 25 years. This proposal is consistent with the Fiscal Commission’s recommendation that we start to cut back on spending in the tax code, and if we continue on this path of paying for the AMT patch, after 2014, it will reduce the deficit by 1 percent of GDP by the end of the decade.

These both are down payments on long-term reform to reduce the deficit further, and the Administration looks forward to working with Congress to permanently covering these costs once and for all.

Similarly, as the President said in the State of the Union address, we are eager to work with the Congress on deficit-neutral, corporate tax reform that will simplify the system, eliminate special interest loopholes, level the playing field, and lower the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years.

And while it does not contribute to our deficits in the short- or medium-term, the President has laid out his principles to strengthen Social Security and has called on Congress to work on a bipartisan fashion to keep this compact with future generations.

As we take these steps to live within our means, we also invest in the areas critical to future economic growth and jobs creation: education, innovation, clean energy, and infrastructure. And even in these areas, the budget cuts programs in order to fund high-priority investments.

For instance, in education we maintain the increased maximum Pell Grant level that we instituted, helping 9 million students afford college. We pay for it with $100 billion in savings, primarily from eliminating summer school Pell awards and the graduate student in-school loan subsidy.

In the area of innovation, we support simplifying, expanding, and making permanent the R&D tax credit, $148 billion in R&D investments -- including a robust $32 billion for NIH -- and meeting visionary goals to bring about a new clean energy economy. To help pay for these investments, lower priority programs are cut, and we eliminate 12 tax breaks to oil, gas, and coal companies that will raise $46 billion over 10 years.

And to build the infrastructure we need to compete, the Budget increases our annual investment by $35 billion a year, which is a 60 percent increase over the last surface transportation reauthorization bill. Not only does this plan consolidate 60 duplicative, often earmarked programs into five and demands more competition for funds, but we insist that this bill be paid for -- and we look forward to working in a bipartisan manner to do that.

In my last tour of duty here in the 1990s, we made the tough, bipartisan decisions needed to bring our budget into surplus. Once again, it will take tough choices  to put us on a sustainable fiscal path. But we should not settle for shortcuts. We need to be true to our values and make the right investments to win the future. As we make these choices, it is critical that we do not cut areas that are essential to helping our economy grow and making a difference for families and businesses. After all, a growing economy where more Americans are working is the best way to reduce our deficits and debt. It is the wind we need at our backs for this already difficult journey.

Another  clear lesson in working in the Congress and here at OMB is that cutting spending and cutting our deficits requires us to put political differences aside and work together. It takes putting the country ahead of party, and the next generation ahead of the next election. Along with the entire Administration, I standready to do that and look forward to working with both sides on Capitol Hill to crafting a set of policies that enable us to live within our means and invest in the future.

Jack Lew is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Rising health care costs are the biggest driver of our long-term deficits, and getting them under control is crucial if we want to grow the economy, create jobs, compete in the world economy and win the future. The Affordable Care Act helps us achieve that goal.

As the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) made clear in a letter sent earlier this month to the Speaker of the House, repealing the Affordable Care Act would increase the budget deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The CBO letter notes that “over the 2012–2021 period, the effect of H.R. 2 [the repeal of ACA] on federal deficits … is likely to be an increase in the vicinity of $230 billion.”  And in the decade after that, we will save more than $1 trillion thanks to the new law.

There are those who are skeptical about the impact of Affordable Care Act  on the deficit and argue that the Affordable Care Act hides costs in future years. If that were the case, we would expect to see a deficit in the first decade and growing deficits in the second decade.

Instead, the opposite is true. According to the independent, non-partisan experts at the Congressional Budget Office, the law’s savings grow faster than the costs over time, generating progressively greater deficit reduction -- more than $1 trillion in the second decade. This is based in  part on policies that will reward doctors who provide high quality care, investments and research into what works and an Independent Payment Advisory Board that will help strengthen Medicare.

These critics also contend that none of the provisions that reduce our deficit will actually happen since Congress will never allow them to take effect. Yet history suggests otherwise. Past Medicare payment modifications of an even larger magnitude, such as those enacted in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (BBA) were largely sustained.  Moreover, if a future Congress tries to repeal cost-containment provisions, it would violate statutory PAYGO unless Congress finds hundreds of billions of dollars in offsets or chooses to waive PAYGO rules.  In today’s fiscal environment this would be both difficult and irresponsible.

Finally, contrary to what some critics claim, the CBO score of the bill when it was enacted does not double count  savings in the Affordable Care Act. Health reform will both help Medicare solvency and the Federal deficit. The Affordable Care Act will reduce the national deficit, and part of the deficit reduction will come from reducing wasteful spending, and fraud and abuse in Medicare. These savings will be credited to the Medicare trust fund and will extend the life of the trust fund. Each of these is a worthy—though distinct—end, and the CBO analysis confirms that both are true. The first is about improving the financial position of the federal government.  The second is about ensuring that Medicare continues to be a source of security for America’s senior citizens.
 
The Affordable Care Act represents a very big change, and has generated robust debate since introduced. That’s a good thing, and a healthy part of our democracy. As the President said last night, we are open to any ideas about how “to improve this law by making care better or more affordable.” I hope the hearings on Capitol Hill and around the country will lead to good ideas that further this goal.

Jack Lew is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

With that in mind, I want to point readers to the op-ed that President Obama wrote in today’s Wall Street Journal, detailing his approach to regulation and the strategy that has guided his Administration from the start.  As the President wrote, our aim is to “strike the right balance” between what is needed to protect the safety and health of all Americans, and what we need to foster economic growth, job creation, and competitiveness. The Administration has followed this balanced approach since taking office, and this executive order formally details our basic operating principles.

With this EO, there should be no confusion about what guides this Administration when crafting regulations. The basic tenets are: to consider costs and how best to reduce burdens for American businesses and consumers; to expand opportunities for public participation and stakeholder involvement; to seek the most flexible, least burdensome approaches; to ensure that regulations are scientifically-driven; and to review old regulations so that rules which are no longer needed can be modified or withdrawn. This smarter approach builds on the best practices of the past, while adapting to serious economic challenges the country faces today.

 At times, the country has gone too far in one direction – either passing too many regulations that in turn stifle job creation and economic growth or not instituting enough oversight (as was the case with the financial sector in the years preceding the recent financial collapse). Our goal must be to institute regulations to ensure that laws passed by Congress are implemented effectively and that Americans are protected from harm. It is our firm belief, for example, that the government has an obligation to ensure that the food you eat does not poison you and the roads you drive on are safe. This Administration has already made historic progress in areas of environmental, health, automobile safety, and workplace safety, and we intend to continue. Regulations play a necessary role in a fair and prosperous society.

At the same time, we need to follow a smarter, more effective approach to regulating to ensure that these necessary protections work without stifling America’s growth and competitiveness. We believe that it is particularly critical now, as our economy continues to recover and create new jobs, that our regulatory strategy be as evidence-based, predictable, cost-effective, and carefully targeted as possible to enable American businesses to continue to grow and innovate. We do this by updating the existing executive order on regulations to address today’s distinctive challenges.

The Executive Order signed today outlines the following guiding principles for government agencies when crafting regulation:

• Consistent with law, Agencies must consider costs and benefits and choose the least burdensome alternative.

• The regulatory process must encourage public participation and an open exchange of views, with an opportunity for the public to comment.

• Agencies must attempt to coordinate, simplify, and harmonize regulations to reduce costs and promote certainty for businesses and the public.

•  Agencies must consider low-cost approaches that reduce burdens and maintain flexibility.∙         Regulations must be guided by objective scientific evidence.

• Existing regulations must be reviewed to determine that they are still necessary and crafted effectively; if not, they must be modified, streamlined, or repealed. 

• Taken together, these principles will create a more effective and cost-efficient regulatory framework. In addition to this EO, the Administration is taking two new steps to promote this balanced approach to regulation.

First, in line with our commitment to creating a more open, transparent, and accountable government, the President directed federal enforcement agencies to make publicly-available compliance information easily accessible, downloadable, and searchable online.  In other words, Americans will be able to see, for their own eyes, which companies are obeying the law. This will help consumers make more informed decisions; foster fair and consistent enforcement; level the regulatory playing field; and hold government accountable for its obligations to the public.

Second, the President issued a memo today on regulatory flexibility for small businesses. Small businesses are critical to our economic growth and job creation. They also tend to have fewer resources and suffer greater harm from regulatory burdens.

This new memo reinforces the need for Federal agencies to consider ways to reduce regulatory burdens on small business. It also requires that agencies provide justifications when such flexibilities are not included in proposed regulation. Such flexibilities could include extended compliance dates; performance standards rather than design standards; simplification of reporting and compliance requirements (as, for example, through streamlined forms and electronic filing options); different requirements for large and small firms; and partial or total exemptions. 

With the President’s memo, agencies will be required not only to consider these alternatives for small businesses, but also to provide written justification when such alternatives are not utilized. We think this will help tilt the playing field back to level for America’s small businesses.

Our regulatory goal is to strike a balance, promoting job creation and economic growth while protecting the health and well-being of Americans through effective regulations. As the President said, this is not a zero-sum game. We can and must make our economy stronger and more competitive, while meeting our fundamental responsibilities to one another.

Jack Lew is the Director of the Office of Managment and Budget

I helped to launch City Year New York after September 11 as part of our City's healing, and was honored to chair its board. MLK day at City Year always brings together hundreds of people eager and excited to give something of themselves, not just to honor Dr. King, but also to improve their community.

Advancing the idea that MLK day should be a "day on" doing service rather than just another "day off", more than 20 members of the Cabinet are at schools, homeless shelters, and other community service organizations pitching in.

Pursuing careers in public service is another way to express the commitment to making our communities and nation better and stronger. During the Clinton Administration I was proud to do my part to help pass the national community service legislation that started Americorps, which supports community service projects that are underway every day across our nation.

It is an honor once again to be working for a President who believes deeply in the power of community service and is committed to creating more opportunities for Americans to serve.

Just a few months after coming into office, President Obama signed into law the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, expanding opportunities for Americans to serve their communities, scaling AmeriCorps from 75,000 volunteers up to 250,000 by 2017. The President’s Budget proposal for FY2011 backed up the promise of that legislation, providing funding for 105,000 AmeriCorps members in 2011, an increase of 20,000 from 2010, as well as supporting the National Civilian Community Corps program, a full-time program that dispatches teams to areas in need, with a focus on disaster relief. Understanding that outcomes are as important as good intentions, the Serve America Act also created a Social Innovation Fund to invest in ideas that are proven to improve outcomes and "what works" funds in federal agencies to promote effective and innovative programs.

And recognizing that Americans wanted to do their part during the recent economic downturn to help their fellow citizens, the President launched United We Serve, a nationwide call to service. In fact, today’s day of service is part of that initiative.

Dr. King once said that “everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.” That is as true today as it was when he said those words. I hope everyone has a chance to give back to their communities and their country today and every day, and that we can continue to strive to be great through our service.

Jack Lew is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget

Yesterday, the House Republican leadership introduced a bill to repeal the ACA. Today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) sent a letter to the Speaker of the House giving its assessment of the budgetary effects of a repeal: it would increase the budget deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The CBO letter notes that “over the 2012–2021 period, the effect of H.R. 2 [the repeal of ACA] on federal deficits … is likely to be an increase in the vicinity of $230 billion.”  This result is not surprising since CBO scored the ACA as reducing the deficit by more than $100 billion through 2019 and by more than $1 trillion in the decade after that.

To be fair, CBO is clear that this is a preliminary estimate that does not take into account a host of changes in the economy, technical matters, and the effects of the implementation to date. But even after a more comprehensive analysis, we should expect the same outcome: the deficit would increase substantially if ACA were repealed. As CBO Director Elmendorf wrote in his blog today, “those developments will probably not have a major effect on the overall budgetary impact of repealing the legislation.”

For those in both parties who care about the deficit and our future fiscal course, the repeal of the ACA should concern them deeply. Rising health care costs are the biggest driver of our long-term deficits, and getting them under control is crucial for the fiscal health of the nation and to keep our economy growing, creating jobs, and competing in the world economy. Beyond that, we need to keep in mind that repealing the ACA also would roll back what the bill already has done to help millions of Americans -- from the families benefitting from the end to lifetime dollar limits on essential benefits to the young people now able to join their parents’ policies and the seniors who now are able to afford their prescription drugs. And repeal would deny an estimated 32 million American citizens health insurance in years to come.

Jack Lew is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget

The President and his economic team worked quickly to address the crisis, and we are seeing our economy recover – albeit more slowly than anyone would like. Families and businesses are still hurting, and too many who want to work are not able to find a job. Our top priority must be to do what we can to help boost economic growth and spur private sector job creation.

But to lay the foundation for long-term economic growth and to make our nation competitive for years to come, we must put the United States back on a sustainable fiscal course. And that’s going to require some tough choices.

Today, the President made one of those: proposing a two-year pay freeze for all civilian federal workers. This will save  $2 billion over the remainder of this fiscal year, $28 billion in cumulative savings over the next five years, and more than $60 billion over the next 10 years. The freeze will apply to all civilian federal employees, including those in various alternative pay plans and those working at the Department of Defense – but not military personnel.

We are announcing this move today because tomorrow is the legal deadline to submit to Congress the President’s decision about locality pay, a key component of overall federal worker pay.  In addition, we are in the midst of the 2012 budget process, and need to make a decision about pay to develop the 2012 budget. Simply, the time to decide about pay for those two years is now.

Make no mistake: this decision was not made lightly.

Like everyone honored to serve in the White House or the Cabinet, we work with extraordinarily talented public servants every day. Throughout my career in the Congress, at  the State department, and here at OMB, I have met federal workers who have sacrificed more lucrative jobs and hours with their families - -and, in some cases, put their lives in harm’s way -- in order to serve their fellow Americans.  Indeed, anyone who has flown safely, enjoyed our national parks, received a Pell grant to go to college, or relied on a Social Security check to retire in dignity has benefited from the service of federal workers.

This pay freeze is not a reflection on their fine work. It is a reflection of the fiscal reality that we face: just as families and businesses across the nation have tightened their belts, so must the federal government.

Already, the Administration has taken a number of steps in this regard  as part of its Accountable Government Initiative from the President freezing the salaries for all senior White House officials and other top political appointees upon taking office to his efforts to get rid of $8 billion of excess federal real property over the next two years, reduce improper payments by $50 billion by the end of 2012, and freeze non-security spending for three years – which will bring non-security discretionary spending to its lowest level as a share of the economy in 50 years.

Moving forward, we will need to make many more tough choices to construct a plan to pay down these deficits and put our nation on sound fiscal footing. Later this week, the Fiscal Commission will release its report laying out its approach, and I look forward to working with people from across the spectrum on this challenge in the weeks to come.

Jack Lew is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

I wanted to take a minute to say how great it is to back at OMB and to join the talented team here that is already hard at work producing a Budget for 2012. Many of the people I am working with are old friends from my previous time spent at OMB, and many more are new colleagues. I look forward to getting to know everyone in the busy weeks and months ahead. I also want to thank everyone at OMB for their support during the confirmation process, and in particular, I am grateful to Jeff Zients and Rob Nabors for their leadership during the transition period.

The fiscal and economic situation we face today is very different than what we faced the last time I served as OMB Director. A series of policy choices and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression present us with a very different set of challenges than those posed by the forecast of surpluses at the end of the 1990’s.  Now, we must put our nation back on a sustainable fiscal course in the medium-term and shore up our fiscal position for decades to come while spurring job creation and boosting the competitiveness of the US in the global economy. And while we should aspire not to waste taxpayer dollars regardless of whether the budget is in surplus or deficit, the management of the federal government is particularly important during lean times. That is why we must make sure every dollar we spend has the desired impact and makes a difference.

As the President has said, it will take tough choices – and putting partisan differences aside -- in order to do what is right for our country today and for our children and grandchildren in the years ahead. I look forward to working – as I have throughout my career -- collaboratively across partisan and ideological divides with all those committed to taking constructive steps to rejuvenating our nation’s economy and its fiscal standing.

Finally, I am new to blogging, but I recognize how OMBlog has become an important tool to communicate directly with the public about what the Administration is doing across a wide range of issues – and to dive deeply into some matters that may be only of interest to real budget wonks. So as I get settled, I look forward to using this platform as a way to keep you informed and share details about our continued progress. 

Jack Lew is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget