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Vote Now: The President's 2010 SAVE Award Finalists

Posted by Jeffrey Zients on November 08, 2010 at 09:49 AM EDT

President Obama and this Administration have taken steady steps to change the way business is done in Washington and make government more effective and efficient for the American people – for today and for years to come. That’s what is driving our Accountable Government Initiative  and all its parts from our effort to stop huge cost overruns in IT projects  to getting rid of unneeded federal properties  and bringing more competition to contracting.

One of the most important changes that the President has brought to Washington is the belief that the best ideas usually come from outside of Washington.  That’s why he launched the first ever SAVE Award last year to get ideas from federal employees on the frontlines to make government work smarter for the American people and to make sure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. And it’s why we are now asking the American people to help us select this year’s winner.

As they did for the first award, federal employees across America and stationed around the globe answered in droves the President’s call for ideas on how to cut waste, save money, and boost performance.
More than 18,000 ideas were submitted this year, and federal employees weighed in with more than 164,000 votes to help the Administration identify promising ideas to save. Our budget team then went through the ideas to see what we were already in the process of fixing, what needed a closer look, and which where worthy of being our four finalists.

Today, we’re announcing our Final Four -- and asking you to weigh in and vote for your favorite idea on www.SAVEAward.gov.

The winner will get to present his or her idea directly to President Obama at the White House. Others will be sent to the responsible agencies for potential action. Last year, 20 SAVE Award ideas made their way directly into the President’s 2011 Budget, and others helped identify cost-savings across an array of areas.
Most importantly, the idea that each employee has both the ability and responsibility for making every taxpayer dollar count is becoming part of the culture in the federal government – not just each year with the SAVE Award, but all year round.

Here are the 2010 finalists:

Stop the Express Delivery of Empty Containers. Marjorie Cook from Gobles, Michigan is a food inspector in USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). FSIS inspectors ship 125,000 samples to labs each year using “Express Next Day” service. Those labs use the same costly shipping method to send empty containers back. As Marjorie put it, “We could save a bundle by having those boxes shipped back through regular ground service.”

Require Mine Operators to Submit Reports Online. Thomas Koenning of Littleton, Colorado works in the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s Information Technology Center. Currently, mine operators are mailed paper forms in order to report quarterly data. Koenning suggests requiring mine operators to make these reports online to save money on costly form production and postage, reduce input errors, and decrease the time it takes to analyze this data which is important to MSHA’s efforts to protect the safety of America’s mine workers.

Post Public Notice of Seized Property Online, Not in Newspapers.  Paul Behe is a Paralegal Specialist for the Department of Homeland Security in Cleveland, Ohio. He suggests advertising property seized by Customs and Border Protection – such as counterfeit watches and purses – online instead of in newspapers. As Paul notes, “In addition to the immense cost reduction for the ads, DHS would be able to save the cost of storage for the seized items that are at the contractors, awaiting adjudication.”

End the Mailing of Thousands of Federal Registers to Government Employees. Trudy Givens from Portage, Wisconsin works for the Bureau of Prisons. The Federal Register is currently mailed to her workplace and nearly 10,000 Federal employees every workday.  Most of the interested public now accesses the Federal Register online. While statute requires that hard copies be available, allowing recipients to opt-in for hard copy delivery could yield savings associated with printing and postage. When a similar “opt-in” (with fee) option was offered to the public, the number of hard copies mailed was reduced from roughly 25,000 to 500 recipients. 

Make no mistake: the SAVE Award will not balance the budget. But cutting waste and restoring accountability for taxpayer dollars is important if the budget is in surplus or in deficit. Pick your favorite from the list, and spread the word to all your family, friends, and colleagues to make their voices heard and help us pick this year’s SAVE Award winner.

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The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
November 06, 2010

Weekly Address: President Obama Calls for Compromise and Explains his Priorities on Taxes

WASHINGTON – As Congress prepares to focus on taxes when it returns to work later this month, President Obama called on both parties to work together and focus on the areas where all sides agree.  First, the President underscored that middle-class families need permanent tax relief, so Congress should permanently extend tax cuts for all families making less than $250,000 a year – 98 percent of the American people.  And second, he noted that, with the nation’s challenging fiscal situation, the country simply cannot afford to borrow another $700 billion on permanent tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.
 
The full audio of the address is HERE. The video can be viewed online at www.whitehouse.gov.

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
November 6, 2010

This week, Americans across the country cast their votes and made their voices heard.  And your message was clear.
 
You’re rightly frustrated with the pace of our economic recovery.  So am I.
 
You’re fed up with partisan politics and want results.  I do too.
 
So I congratulate all of this week’s winners – Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.  But now, the campaign season is over.  And it’s time to focus on our shared responsibilities to work together and deliver those results: speeding up our economic recovery, creating jobs, and strengthening the middle class so that the American Dream feels like it’s back within reach.
 
That’s why I’ve asked to sit down soon with leaders of both parties so that we can have an extended discussion about what we can do together to move this country forward.
 
And over the next few weeks, we’re going to have a chance to work together in the brief upcoming session of Congress.  
 
Here’s why this lame duck session is so important.  Early in the last decade, President Bush and Congress enacted a series of tax cuts that were designed to expire at the end of this year.
 
What that means is, if Congress doesn’t act by New Year’s Eve, middle-class families will see their taxes go up starting on New Year’s Day.
 
But the last thing we should do is raise taxes on middle-class families.  For the past decade, they saw their costs rise, their incomes fall, and too many jobs go overseas.  They’re the ones bearing the brunt of the recession.  They’re the ones having trouble making ends meet. They are the ones who need relief right now.
 
So something’s got to be done.  And I believe there’s room for us to compromise and get it done together.
 
Let’s start where we agree.  All of us want certainty for middle-class Americans.  None of us want them to wake up on January 1st with a higher tax bill.  That’s why I believe we should permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for all families making less than $250,000 a year.  That’s 98 percent of the American people.  
 
We also agree on the need to start cutting spending and bringing down our deficit.  That’s going to require everyone to make some tough choices.  In fact, if Congress were to implement my proposal to freeze non-security discretionary spending for three years, it would bring this spending down to its lowest level as share of the economy in 50 years.
 
But at a time when we are going to ask folks across the board to make such difficult sacrifices, I don’t see how we can afford to borrow an additional $700 billion from other countries to make all the Bush tax cuts permanent, even for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.  We’d be digging ourselves into an even deeper fiscal hole and passing the burden on to our children.
 
I recognize that both parties are going to have to work together and compromise to get something done here.  But I want to make my priorities clear from the start.  One: middle class families need permanent tax relief. And two: I believe we can’t afford to borrow and spend another $700 billion on permanent tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.
 
There are new public servants in Washington, but we still face the same challenges.  And you made it clear that it’s time for results. This a great opportunity to show everyone that we got the message and that we’re willing, in this post-election season, to come together and do what’s best for the country we all love.
 
Thanks.

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Ceasing Checks to the Deceased

Posted by Jeffrey Zients on October 29, 2010 at 09:43 AM EDT

Whether the budget is in surplus or in deficit, we cannot tolerate the wasting of taxpayer dollars – and there are few more egregious examples of waste than improper payments. These are payments made by the government to the wrong person, at the wrong time, or in the wrong amount, and last year, they totaled approximately $110 billion.

This morning, Senator Tom Coburn released a report highlighting one aspect of improper payments: government benefits being sent to the deceased. Senator Coburn found that over the past decade, $1 billion has been sent improperly to individuals clearly ineligible for earthly benefits. While the vast bulk of these improper payments happened during the previous Administration, it’s critical that we move aggressively to curb them – and that’s what we have been doing since the early days of the Obama Administration. In fact, the President has set an aggressive goal: to eliminate $50 billion in improper payments between 2010 and the end of FY 2012.

How are we going to do that?

First, on November 19, 2009, the President issued an executive order laying out a strategy to reduce improper payments through boosting transparency, holding agencies accountable, and creating strong incentives for compliance. Specifically, the executive order required the identification of high-priority programs, the selection of accountable officials to coordinate agency program integrity efforts, the development of supplemental measures of payment error for high-priority programs, a public website to track progress in reducing improper payments (PaymentAccuracy.gov), and the pursuit of tough penalties on contractors for failing to timely disclose credible evidence of significant overpayments received on government contracts.

Second, on March 10, 2010, the President signed a presidential memorandum directing all Federal departments and agencies to expand and intensify their use of payment recapture audits. These are audits which offer specialized private auditors financial incentives to root out improper payments, and have been demonstrated through pilot programs to be highly effective.

Third, on June 8, the President announced that the Administration would cut the improper payment rate in the Medicare Fee for Service program in half by 2012. Doing so will eliminate more than $20 billion in payment errors by FY 2012.

Fourth, on June 18, the President issued a memorandum directing that a Do Not Pay List be established to provide a single source through which all agencies can check the status of a potential contractor or individual. Too often, an agency does not check all the different databases the government has or finds it unnecessarily difficult to do so. This denies agencies essential information they need to determine, for example, if an individual is alive or dead or if a contractor had been debarred. The Do Not Pay List will allow Federal agencies to access this information in a more timely and cost effective manner and will help reduce improper payments made by the Government and help save taxpayer dollars. 

That same day, the Vice President announced the expansion of a cutting-edge fraud mapping tool that the Recovery Accountability Transparency Board has deployed that gathers enormous quantities of information in real time and then analyzes the data and helps connect the dots to identify indicators of possible fraud or error. The Administration is piloting it first at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services before expanding the use of this type of tool across government.

Finally, in a ceremony in the State Dining Room on July 22, the President signed the bi-partisan Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (IPERA) into law, which will strengthen and complement the efforts already undertaken to reduce improper payments. 

There is still more work to be done as the team here works hard to implement these new strategies and the IPERA legislation. We welcome Senator Coburn’s highlighting of this important issue, and look forward to continue working with Congress to reduce improper payments, combat fraud, cut waste, and make government more effective and efficient.

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Real Update on Real Property

Posted by Jeffrey Zients on October 27, 2010 at 04:04 PM EDT

As I’ve written about before, as part of the President’s Accountable Government Initiative, we are taking aggressive steps to save taxpayer dollars while making government work better, harder and more efficiently for the American people.

That’s why on June 10, 2010, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum titled “Disposing of Unneeded Federal Real Estate” directing agencies to accelerate efforts to remove excess and surplus property for a savings of $8 billion by the end of FY 2012. And as part of the President’s FY 2012 budget process, we are working closely with Federal agencies to achieve that goal.

Federal agencies have detailed plans to cut excess property costs and implement cost cutting measures. To date, Federal agencies have identified $1.7 billion of the $3 billion in non-defense savings opportunities that the President has required us to achieve by the end of FY 2012. And we are off to a good start in converting these opportunities to bottom line savings for taxpayers. For instance, we are selling buildings such as one office building in Omaha, Nebraska for $1.3 million, one in Springfield, Massachusetts for $2.5 million, and one in Bethesda, Maryland for $12.4 million.

The Department of Defense is also on track to achieve the $5 billion in real property cost savings through the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process in the same time period.

While there is still work to be done, we are pleased with the progress made thus far and we are working with the agencies to identify further opportunities for cost reductions.

As the country’s largest property owner and energy user, it is critical that we remain vigilant about our operating costs. By selling buildings, reducing maintenance costs, cutting energy costs, consolidating and re-aligning existing space and reducing leases, we are saving taxpayer dollars and making government work better for everyone.

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Cutting Through the Rhetoric on Spending

Dan Pfeiffer
Dan Pfeiffer
October 20, 2010
01:05 PM EDT

In Washington, it’s often hard to cut through it all the political rhetoric and examine the facts of what is being claimed. Today’s New York Times did that with a critical issue: government spending.

In “As G.O.P. Seeks Spending Cuts, Details Are Scarce,” David Herszenhorn reports that all over the country, Congressional Republicans are calling for spending restraint, but offering few if any details on what they would cut.

The scarcity of those details is probably explained by the fact that, as the Times puts it, “federal budget statistics show that Republican policies over the last decade, and the cost of the two wars, added far more to the deficit than initiatives approved by the Democratic Congress since 2006.” In particular, the previous administration’s failure to pay for two large tax cuts and a prescription drug benefit for Medicare added trillions of dollars to our deficits. Congressional Republicans certainly don’t mention that their call to extend tax cuts to the wealthiest of the wealthy would add another $700 billion to the deficit or that their call to repeal the Affordable Care Act actually would make the deficit $100 billion larger over the next decade.

Related Topics: Economy, Fiscal Responsibility

West Wing Week: "I Spy"

October 14, 2010 | 4:05 | Public Domain

Welcome to the West Wing Week, your guide to everything that's happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Walk step by step with the President as he comes out strong for investing in infrastructure to boost the economy and create jobs, and meets with students from all levels of education throughout the week. From elementary and middle school students from the documentary ‘Waiting for Superman,’ to high school and college students who are finalists of the NFTE National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge, to college students who have benefited from the American Opportunity Tax Credit, it’s a reminder why investing in our kids is always worthwhile…

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Setting the Spending Record Straight

Jenny Kaplan
Kenneth Baer
October 12, 2010
05:40 PM EDT

The Wall Street Journal today ran an editorial bemoaning the increase in federal spending between FY 2008 and FY 2010.

What it doesn’t factor in, or provide context for, is the chain of events that led to these increases. 

First, a large driver of federal spending was the onset of the economic collapse in late 2008 as automatic aid to people hit hard by the downturn, such as unemployment insurance and food stamps, kicked in. With more people temporarily eligible for these mandatory programs and less revenue coming in, the deficit increased substantially in FY 2009, which began on October 1, 2008.  In fact, on January 7, 2009 -- before President Obama was sworn in -- the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued its Economic and Budget Outlook for Fiscal Years 2009-2019. In that document, CBO projected that government spending would rise from 20.9 percent of GDP in FY 2008 to 24.9 percent of GDP in FY 2009.  In reality, government spending in FY 2009 turned out to be roughly what had been predicted a year earlier (24.7 percent). That is to say, this big increase of government spending occurred because of the economic meltdown the Administration inherited and the accompanying automatic increase in programs that assist those most hurt by it -- and this was already fully baked into the fiscal cake when the President took office.

Kenneth Baer is the Associate Director for Communications and Strategic Planning at OMB
Related Topics: Economy, Fiscal Responsibility

West Wing Week: "One Two Three ... Lancers!"

September 30, 2010 | 5:48 | Public Domain

Welcome to the West Wing Week, your guide to everything that's happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Walk step by step with the President as he signs the Small Business Jobs Act, speaks to college journalists, holds backyard discussions about the economy with area families across the heartland and much more...

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West Wing Week: "One Two Three ... Lancers!"

Arun Chaudhary
Arun Chaudhary
October 01, 2010
12:00 AM EDT

Welcome to the West Wing Week, your guide to everything that's happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Walk step by step with the President as he signs the Small Business Jobs Act, speaks to college journalists, holds backyard discussions about the economy with area families across the heartland and much more...

For more information on the events in this edition of West Wing Week, check out the links below:

Monday, September 27th, 2010

Monday, September 27th, 2010

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

Arun Chaudhary is the official White House videographer
Related Topics: Economy, Education, Fiscal Responsibility, Health Care, Taxes, Additional Issues, Pennsylvania

West Wing Week: "Back to School"

September 16, 2010 | 5:42 | Public Domain

Welcome to West Wing Week, your guide to everything that’s happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. This week, walk step by step with the President as he travels to Arlington, Virginia to attend a wreath laying ceremony at the Pentagon 9/11 Memorial, celebrates the start of a new school year with his second annual ‘Back to School’ speech in Philadelphia, and holds a Cabinet meeting looking for ways for the Federal Government’s agencies to work together to improve the economy.

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