President Obama on Our Economy and the Debt Limit: "Now is the Time to Go Ahead and Make the Tough Choices"

Jesse Lee
Jesse Lee
June 29, 2011
06:19 PM EDT

Watch the President's full remarks here.

In his press conference this morning, the President took questions on anything the White House press corps could think of, but his primary argument was on the economy, the deficits, and the consequences of Congress not acting and allowing America to default on its debt.  He made clear that while he continues to work on everything from streamlining regulations to getting capital to small business, there are things Congress can do right now to grow the economy and create jobs – including putting construction workers back to work rebuilding our country, passing into law trade agreements that will increase exports and create jobs and coming to an agreement to reduce the deficit. As he explained, reducing our deficits has to be done in a fair and balanced way, and that means those in Congress who are looking only at cutting core priorities like education and medical research and cutting Medicare benefits for seniors while excluding even the most egregious tax loopholes for special interests and the very wealthiest Americans need to come to the table:

On Closing Tax Loopholes for Millionaires and Billionaires: 

There’s been a lot of discussion about revenues and raising taxes in recent weeks, so I want to be clear about what we’re proposing here.  I spent the last two years cutting taxes for ordinary Americans, and I want to extend those middle-class tax cuts.  The tax cuts I’m proposing we get rid of are tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires; tax breaks for oil companies and hedge fund managers and corporate jet owners. 

It would be nice if we could keep every tax break there is, but we’ve got to make some tough choices here if we want to reduce our deficit.  And if we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for corporate jet owners, if we choose to keep tax breaks for oil and gas companies that are making hundreds of billions of dollars, then that means we’ve got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship.  That means we’ve got to stop funding certain grants for medical research.  That means that food safety may be compromised.  That means that Medicare has to bear a greater part of the burden.  Those are the choices we have to make.

So the bottom line is this:  Any agreement to reduce our deficit is going to require tough decisions and balanced solutions.  And before we ask our seniors to pay more for health care, before we cut our children’s education, before we sacrifice our commitment to the research and innovation that will help create more jobs in the economy, I think it’s only fair to ask an oil company or a corporate jet owner that has done so well to give up a tax break that no other business enjoys.  I don’t think that’s real radical.  I think the majority of Americans agree with that. 

On Addressing Debt Limit: 

Related Topics: Economy, Fiscal Responsibility, Iowa

Raw Video: First Lady Michelle Obama & Desmond Tutu Do Push-Ups

June 24, 2011 | :47 | Public Domain

Raw video from the Cape Town Youth Soccer Event in Cape Town, Africa of the First Lady and Archbishop Desmond Tutu participating in a push-up activity with local youth.

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TooManyWebsites.gov

Macon Phillips
Macon Phillips
June 13, 2011
02:50 PM EDT

As the President points out in this video, our government doesn’t need a website dedicated to foresters who play the fiddle. We also don’t need multiple sites dealing with invasive plants (here and here).  And I‘m pretty sure the website dedicated to the Centennial of Flight can come down... particularly since the Centennial was in 2003.

As President Obama has said, we can’t win the future with a government of the past. How our government uses the internet to communicate and deliver services is an obvious and critical part of this modernization effort.

Today, there are nearly 2,000 top-level federal .gov domains (this means a top-level url, [WEBSITENAME].gov, that links to a distinct website). This includes WhiteHouse.gov, as well as others like USDA.gov, USASpending.gov, NOAA.gov and USA.gov. Under many of these domains are smaller sub-sites and microsites resulting in an estimated 24,000 websites of varying purpose, design, navigation, usability, and accessibility.

While many government websites each deliver value to the taxpayer through easy-to-use services and information, an overall online landscape of literally thousands of websites – each focusing on a specific topic or organization – can create confusion and inefficiency.

Related Topics: Economy, Ethics, Fiscal Responsibility, Technology, Additional Issues

The White House

Office of the Vice President

For Immediate Release
June 13, 2011

White House Launches Campaign to Cut Waste: Vice President to Take on Making Government More Accountable

Obama Administration Establishes New Board of Fraud and Waste Watchdogs

WASHINGTON – In a video message to the American people, President Obama and Vice President Biden launched the Campaign to Cut Waste, which will hunt down and eliminate misspent tax dollars in every agency and department across the federal government.  The Vice President hosted an event at the White House today where he announced that the President has asked him to take on a new role holding the Cabinet accountable for cutting waste in their agencies as part of the Administration’s ongoing effort to make government more accountable to the American people. At the event, he outlined the new steps the government would be taking as part of an Executive Order the President signed this morning.

The Campaign to Cut Waste will build on the Accountable Government Initiative, led by OMB Director Jacob Lew and OMB’s Deputy Director for Management and Federal Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients, which has already tackled waste and inefficiency in many areas across government, cutting contracting spending for the first time in 13 years, identifying $3 billion in information technology savings, shutting down duplicative data centers and getting rid of excess federal real estate.  The Administration also put out an update on steps they have taken to date to reduce government waste and make government work better for the American people.

“Targeting waste and making government more efficient have been a priority for my administration since day one.  But as we work to tackle the budget deficit, we need to step up our game,” President Obama said in a message to the American people. “No amount of waste is acceptable – not when it’s your money; not at a time when so many families are already cutting back.”

“For too long the federal government has allowed billions of taxpayer dollars to be wasted on inefficiencies,” said Vice President Biden. “Over the last two years, we have been slashing waste across government and today we are putting Washington on notice:  the President and I are committed to changing the way government works and we are stepping up the hunt for misspent dollars.” 

“Any waste of taxpayer dollars is unacceptable whether we are in surplus or deficit, but it is particularly offensive at a time of such fiscal challenges,” said OMB Director Jacob Lew.  “At the same time as we work to tackle our deficits, it is critical that we continue to root out waste, identify ways to do more with less, and ensure the tax dollars of America’s families are put to good use. We will continue to update the public on these efforts, building on the unprecedented transparency of the Recovery Act.”

The Vice President was joined for the announcement by Lew, Zients, and chairman of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board Earl Devaney, along with several agency Inspectors General, Chief Financial Officers, Deputy Secretaries, and additional Administration officials.

The President signed an Executive Order this morning establishing the Campaign to Cut Waste which includes two key initiatives:

1. New Oversight and Accountability Board: Building on the successful execution of the Recovery Act, the Vice President announced the establishment of a new oversight and accountability board to help federal agencies improve their performance and reduce waste, fraud and abuse across government.

The Recovery Act’s use of unprecedented transparency to drive accountability and prevent fraud is a success story that needs to be replicated across federal government spending.  The mission of the new Board is to allow taxpayers the same ability to track where their dollars are going and to have the same confidence that the dollars are not being lost to waste, fraud, or abuse, not just for Recovery Act dollars, but more broadly.

The Board will be composed of 11 members, including agency Inspectors General, agency Chief Financial Officers or Deputy Secretaries, an official from the Office of Management & Budget, and other such members the President may designate.  The new Board will work closely with Chairman Devaney and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to expand the benefits of this new, more effective way of doing business.

2. Regular Cabinet Meetings to Report Progress to the Vice President:   The Executive Order also strengthens accountability, directing Cabinet members to report progress cutting waste and delivering results directly to the Vice President. Just as he did with the Recovery Act, the Vice President will be holding regular meetings with Cabinet members to make sure that we are doing all we can to eliminate government waste, save taxpayer dollars and make government work better. The order also requires agency Chief Operating Officers and Chief Financial Officers to report progress regularly to the Office of Management and Budget.

As one of the campaign’s first steps, the Administration will be targeting duplication and waste among federal websites. There are almost 2,000 separate websites across the Federal Government. With so many separate sites, Americans often do not know where to turn for information.  The Administration will immediately put a halt to the creation of new websites. The Administration will also shutdown or consolidate 25% of the 2000 sites over the next few months and set a goal of cutting the number of separate, stand alone sites in half over the next year.

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
June 13, 2011

Executive Order 13576--Delivering an Efficient, Effective, and Accountable Government

EXECUTIVE ORDER

DELIVERING AN EFFICIENT, EFFECTIVE, AND ACCOUNTABLE GOVERNMENT

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to cut waste, streamline Government operations, and reinforce the performance and management reform gains my Administration has achieved, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1.  Policy.  My Administration is committed to ensuring that the Federal Government serves the American people with the utmost effectiveness and efficiency.  Over the last 2 years, we have made good progress and have saved taxpayer dollars by cutting waste and increasing the efficiency of Government operations by curbing uncontrolled growth in contract spending, terminating poorly performing information technology projects, deploying state of the art fraud detection tools to crack down on waste, focusing agency leaders on achieving ambitious improvements in high priority areas, and opening Government up to the public to increase accountability and accelerate innovation.

The American people must be able to trust that their Government is doing everything in its power to stop wasteful practices and earn a high return on every tax dollar that is spent.  To strengthen that trust and deliver a smarter and leaner Government, my Administration will reinforce the performance and management reform gains achieved thus far; systematically identify additional reforms necessary to eliminate wasteful, duplicative, or otherwise inefficient programs; and publicize these reforms so that they may serve as a model across the Federal Government.

The implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111 5) (Recovery Act) has seen unprecedented transparency.  The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board (RATB) has developed innovative technologies and approaches for preventing and identifying fraud and abuse that have the potential to improve performance across all of Government spending.

Sec. 2.  Accountable Government Initiative.  (a)  On September 14, 2010, in a Memorandum to the Senior Executive Service, my Administration introduced goals for the Accountable Government Initiative (Initiative).  The mission of the Initiative is to monitor and promote agency progress in making Government work better, faster, and more efficiently.  To hold executive departments and agencies (agencies) accountable for obtaining results consistent with this mission, the Vice President shall convene periodic meetings in which Cabinet members and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) report to him on improvements implemented under their direction.

(b)  The Federal Chief Performance Officer (CPO), who also serves as the Deputy Director for Management of OMB and the Chair of the President's Management Council (PMC), shall work with the PMC to support agencies' performance and management reform and cost cutting efforts.  The CPO will lead OMB and the PMC in identifying practices that should be adopted across agencies and in facilitating reforms that require cross-agency coordination and cooperation.  The CPO shall work with agencies to ensure that each area identified as critical to performance improvement has robust performance metrics in place, and that these metrics are frequently analyzed and reviewed by agency leadership.  Agencies shall update these metrics quarterly, as appropriate, on the website performance.gov.

(c)  In accordance with the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (31 U.S.C. 1115 et seq.), each agency's Chief Operating Officer (COO) shall be designated as the Senior Accountable Official responsible for leading performance and management reform efforts, and for reducing wasteful or ineffective programs, policies, and procedures.  In discharging this responsibility, this official shall be accountable for conducting frequent data driven reviews of agency progress toward goals in the areas that OMB identifies as being critical to performance improvement across agencies or that the agency head identifies as top near term priorities.  These goals may include reforming information technology, reducing improper payments, leveraging the Federal Government's purchasing scale, reducing high risk contracting practices, improving the management of Federal real estate, enhancing customer service, and achieving agency and Federal Government priority goals identified pursuant to the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010.

(d)  The Director of OMB shall provide guidance to agencies as part of the Fiscal Year 2013 budget process for identifying areas of program overlap and duplication within and across agencies, and for proposing consolidations and reductions to address those inefficiencies.

(e)  The Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) at all agencies shall be responsible for achieving agency cost savings.  This will include each agency's share of the $2.1 billion in administrative cost savings identified in my Fiscal Year 2012 Budget, and for achieving those savings as quickly as possible.  The CFOs are encouraged to realize these cost savings by targeting wasteful practices and by reducing, and identifying alternatives to, discretionary travel, the use of consultants, and other administrative expenses.  The Federal CFO Council shall provide a monthly report on these efforts to the PMC, with relevant findings and progress reported on performance.gov.

Sec 3.  Government Accountability and Transparency Board.  (a)  There is hereby established a Government Accountability and Transparency Board (Board) to provide strategic direction for enhancing the transparency of Federal spending and advance efforts to detect and remediate fraud, waste, and abuse in Federal programs.  The Board shall be composed of 11 members designated by the President from among agency Inspectors General, agency Chief Financial Officers or Deputy Secretaries, a senior official of OMB, and such other members as the President shall designate.  The President shall designate a Chair from among the members.  Building on the lessons learned from the successful implementation of the Recovery Act, the Board shall work with the RATB to apply the approaches developed by the RATB across Government spending.

(b)  Not later than 6 months after the date of this order, the Board shall submit a report to the President that identifies implementation guidelines for integrating systems that support the collection and display of Government spending data, ensuring the reliability of those data, and broadening the deployment of fraud detection technologies, including those proven successful during the implementation of the Recovery Act.

(c)  The Director of OMB, in consultation with the Board, shall be responsible for assisting executive agencies in achieving objectives in the guidelines identified in subsection (b) above.

(d)  The Chair of the Board, in consultation with the Director of OMB, shall provide monthly updates to the Vice President on the progress obtained under this order.

Sec. 4.  General Provisions.  (a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i)   authority granted by law to a department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii)  functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget related to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.


BARACK OBAMA

THE WHITE HOUSE,
June 13, 2011.

The Campaign To Cut Waste

June 13, 2011 | 4:07 | Public Domain

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden speak about the Administration's ongoing effort to make government more accountable to the American people through The Campaign to Cut Waste. The Campaign To Cut Waste will build on the Accountable Government Initiative, led by OMB Director Jacob Lew and OMB's Deputy Director for Management and Federal Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients, which has already tackled waste and inefficiency in many areas across government, cutting contracting spending for the first time in 13 years, identifying $3 billion in information technology savings, shutting down duplicative data centers and getting rid of excess federal real estate. This campaign continues the steps the administration has taken to date to reduce government waste and make government work better for the American people. http://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/21stcenturygov

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New Ideas to Cut Improper Payments

Posted by Jack Lew on May 23, 2011 at 11:53 AM EDT

For many years, the federal government has erroneously cut checks to the wrong person for the wrong amount and for the wrong reason – sometimes these misdirected payments even go to dead people or prisoners.  These mistakes, though often inadvertent, contributed to the $125 billion in improper payments made in 2010.  Cutting waste and combating these kinds of erroneous payments has been a priority [http://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2010/11/16/improper-payment-progress] for President Obama. Today, the Administration is taking another step to tackle these improper payments.
 

As part of the President’s committment to crack down on improper payments he created the Partnership Fund for Program Integrity Innovation, to help States and localities find ways to save taxpayer dollars and deliver benefits more efficiently and effectively.  The “Collaborative Forum,” a group of 200+ state and local administrators and other stakeholders involved in the benefit delivery process, has been working to generate ideas for innovative pilot projects to reduce errors, fraud, and waste.  As a result of their efforts, OMB is announcing four exciting new pilot projects focused on reducing improper payments.

These pilot investments could lead to at least $100 million in annual savings if the pilots are successfully scaled up and will provide hard data about how Federal agencies as well as States and localities can save money and significantly improve program integrity, service delivery and efficiency.

Here’s a summary of the four new pilots:

  1. Through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), States will test how sharing a Medicaid provider enrollment system among a group of states may help Federal and State governments strengthen their abilities to detect and prevent provider fraud, while increasing administrative efficiencies.
  2. The Department of Labor will lead a project to test new ways to reduce overpayments in the unemployment insurance program by helping States access new data sources to more quickly identify beneficiaries who are most likely to be newly employed.
  3. Through the Food and Nutrition Service at the Department of Agriculture, States will test sharing benefits information, which could reduce duplicate payments, make it easier and quicker for a participant to find out whether they are eligible, and allow people in need to continue to receive benefits in the event of a disaster.
  4. The Department of the Treasury will test how they can apply their existing debt collection systems to help States collect outstanding debt that includes Federal dollars.

These pilots will help lay the groundwork for government to achieve better results at lower cost and improve service delivery for people who receive government services, whether in Washington or in communities across the country. We are thankful to the participants in the Collaborative Forum, who have lent their collective experience and expertise to explore new opportunities to improve stewardship of taxpayer dollars.

 

These new pilots build on the three Presidential directives on preventing and recapturing improper payments over the last year and a half, our use of cutting edge forensic technology and tools, the new accountability measures implemented with PaymentAccuracy.gov, the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010, and the Administration’s early progress avoiding nearly $4 billion in improper payments and tripling the amount of improper payments to contractors recaptured last year. The President’s 2012 Budget proposes even more aggressive tools that will help drive down this waste.  Specifically, the Budget includes a number of legislative and administrative reforms on improper payments and debt collection, which if enacted will result in over $160 billion in savingsto the Federal Government over ten years. 

 

As the President said in his last State of the Union address, “We shouldn’t just give our people a government that’s more affordable.  We should give them a government that’s more competent and more efficient.  We can’t win the future with a government of the past.” Over the last two years, we have streamlined operations to save taxpayer dollars, curbed the decade long rise in contracting costs, proposed an aggressive plan to get rid of excess federal property, and saved billions by leveraging technology to make government work smarter and more efficiently for the American people.  Cutting waste and changing the way Washington does business are critical priorities for the Obama Administration and we’ll continue to update you on our progress.

 

To learn more about the Collaborative Forum, visit www.collaborativeforumonline.com. You can also submit pilot ideas to the Partnership Fund online at www.partner4solutions.gov.

 

 

 

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Saving Money by Selling Excess Property

Jeffrey Zients
Jeffrey Zients
May 04, 2011
04:25 PM EDT

As we look at our fiscal situation, the President understands that the Federal Government must do what American families are doing all across the country: find ways to live within our means and invest in the future. That means cracking down on waste and getting the most from taxpayer dollars.

Since President Obama took office, we’ve made unprecedented progress in reforming the way Washington works - saving billions of taxpayer dollars through IT reform, cut contracting spending, and eliminated duplicative and ineffective programs.

In his State of the Union address, the President discussed another area that is ripe for savings and reform  -- the real estate footprint of the Federal government. For too long, the American people’s hard-earned tax dollars have gone to waste, funding empty buildings and holding on to valuable properties the government no longer needs. That is something that shouldn’t be tolerated at any time, but especially with this challenging fiscal environment, it’s unacceptable.

Today, we’re sending legislation to the Hill that will cut through red tape and politics to rid the government of the burden of excess property and save taxpayers at least $15 billion. We look forward to working with members of Congress to pass this legislation, the Civilian Property Realignment Act.

Related Topics: Fiscal Responsibility

Cracking Down on Wasteful, Duplicative Spending

Vivek Kundra
Vivek Kundra
May 03, 2011
09:28 AM EDT

For too long, the Federal Government allowed the American people’s hard-earned tax dollars to fund ineffective and duplicative projects, failing to leverage advances in technology to achieve savings. The result is that taxpayer dollars have been wasted. This should never be tolerated, but particularly with the tough fiscal situation, it’s unacceptable. It’s time that we live within our means, cut the waste too prevalent in Washington, and live up to our responsibility to the American people.

The President has made it a priority of his Administration to change the way Washington does business. As he has said many times, including in his State of the Union Address, reducing overlap and duplication within the federal government is critical to ensuring that our government operates more efficiently and effectively.

When it comes to information technology, there is no better way to identify duplication than to look at the very infrastructure that powers duplicative systems. Since 1998, the number of Federal data centers has risen from 432 to more than 2,000.  The proliferation of infrastructure has created an environment that enables redundant systems and applications to sprout like weeds – with hundreds of redundant applications, more than 24,000 websites and hundreds of HR and financial management systems across the government.

Related Topics: Ethics, Fiscal Responsibility, Maryland

West Wing Week: "Final Adjustments"

April 29, 2011 | 5:19 | Public Domain

Welcome to the West Wing Week, your guide to everything that's happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This week, while the White House celebrated Easter, holding the traditional egg roll on the South Lawn, President Obama kept his focus on the nation's finances, working on short term and long term ways to get away from high gas prices. He also pledged support for Alabama and other states in the South hit by devastating storms and announced new key members of his National Security team.

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