Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:

Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 7am CST on May 8, 2011.

Senator Rand Paul on Feb 7, 2011 wrote the article “A Modest $500 Billion Proposal: My spending cuts would keep 85% of government funding and not touch Social Security,” Wall Street Journal and he observed:

Here are some of his specific suggestions:

Transportation Security Administration: Reduce 40 Percent

Following the 9/11 attacks, the Transportation Safety Administration has provided the majority of airport security screeners across the country. A number of airports however, (17 in a recent count) have replaced TSA screeners with private contractors. Kansas City International Airport was the first airport to use private screeners as opposed to the TSA. Kansas City Airport director Mark VanLoh said in an NPR article, “In my opinion, these contract employees – they’re not federal employees; they’re not guaranteed a job for life. If they don’t meet performance goals, or maybe they’re consistently rude, or maybe they miss objects that go through the machine, they are terminated.”

GAO has stated concerning the use of private screeners “The private screening under federal supervision works and performs statistically significantly better, so our main purpose here is in getting better screening and better performance, not to mention that we can get better cost for the taxpayer.”

Currently TSA has over 67,000 employees across the United States and screeners have plans to unionize, which can and will drive up costs to the American taxpayer.

In 2005, The Washington Post published a story, “The High Cost of a Rush to Security,” a small taste of the tremendous waste produced by the Transportation Security Administration at DHS:

TSA Lost Control of Over $300 Million Spent by Contractor to Hire Airport Screeners After 9/11

By Scott Higham and Robert O’Harrow Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, June 30, 2005

The money was spent in the name of improving security at the nation’s airports:

· $526.95 for one phone call from the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Chicago to Iowa City.

· $1,180 for 20 gallons of Starbucks Coffee — $3.69 a cup — at the Santa Clara Marriott in California.

· $1,540 to rent 14 extension cords at $5 each per day for three weeks at the Wyndham Peaks

Resort and Golden Door Spa in Telluride, Colo.

· $8,100 for elevator operators at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan.

· $5.4 million claimed for nine months’ salary for the chief executive of an “event logistics” firm that

received a contract before it was incorporated and went out of business after the contract ended.

Those details are contained in a federal audit that calls into question $303 million of the $741 million spent to assess and hire airport passenger screeners for the newly created Transportation Security Administration after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The audit, along with interviews with people involved in the passenger-screener contract, paints a rare and detailed portrait of how officials at the fledgling agency lost control of the spending in the pell-mell rush to hire 60,000 screeners to meet a one-year congressional deadline.

The audit, performed by the Defense Contract Audit Agency at the TSA’s behest, spotlights scores of expenses: $20-an-hour temporary workers billed to the government at $48 per hour, subcontractors who signed out $5,000 in cash at a time with no supporting documents, $377,273.75 in unsubstantiated longdistance phone calls, $514,201 to rent tents that flooded in a rainstorm, $4.4 million in “no show” fees for job candidates who did not appear for tests.

The audit faulted the prime contractor, NCS Pearson Inc., which was hired by the TSA to test, interview, fingerprint, medically evaluate and pre-certify the candidates. The audit said Pearson failed to properly justify costs and improperly awarded subcontracts without competitive bidding. The audit also said the company demonstrated a “lack of management or oversight of subcontractors.”

One of the audit’s key revelations is that a decision to move the hiring process from Pearson’s 925 U.S. private assessment centers to 150 hotels and other meeting facilities added at least $343 million to the cost of the contract, according to an estimate by Pearson. The company said it was ordered to make the change by the TSA, which said it made the decision in collaboration with Pearson.

The decision also reduced the time Pearson had to evaluate and hire 60,000 screeners from 32 weeks to 14 because the TSA delayed the schedule, the company said. Pearson later said the decision forced the company to hire a small army of subcontractors, whose invoices and charges are at the heart of the spending highlighted in the audit.

“It was a waste of taxpayer’s money,” said Patrick Cowan, of Denver, who supervised hiring efforts for Pearson at 43 sites in the central part of the country. “There was abuse of the taxpayers’ trust. We didn’t get the bang for our buck.”

First GOP Presidential Debate Part 1

The first GOP presidential debate for 2012 was held in South Carolina the evening of May 5, 2011. Participants were Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, businessman Herman Cain, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson.

May 5th in Greenville, SC was the first Republican Presidential Debate. John Fund commented that he thought MN Governor Tim Pawlenty did very well in the first debate.

In the article “First GOP Debate Introduces Pawlenty to Nation,” RollCall.com, May 5, 2011, Christina Bellantoni wrote:

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty used the first Republican presidential debate — and the absence of major contenders — to showcase his credentials, deflect criticism of unpopular positions and introduce himself to voters.

The most newsworthy element of the Fox News-hosted forum held Thursday night in Greenville, S.C., might have been the number of likely candidates missing from the stage. The debate was the first of the primary season, but top contenders Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich skipped it. Other potential candidates — including Mitch Daniels, Jon Huntsman, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin — stayed home.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.); Rep. Ron Paul (Texas); former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson; and Herman Cain, who has never held public office, appeared with Pawlenty in Thursday’s debate.

One challenge Pawlenty faces is a lack of name recognition nationally, and he used the evening to tell his personal story and introduce himself to the voters tuning in to the still-forming race for the first time.

Pawlenty was put on the defensive when moderators presented him with a 2008 radio spot he recorded favoring a cap on greenhouse gases. The former governor told the audience he “made a mistake” and no longer supports a cap-and-trade system. “Nobody’s perfect,” he said.

Perhaps aware that he was the frontrunner onstage and that the evening carried low stakes, Pawlenty repeatedly detailed his record and reminded voters that he was from a working-class background. “I saw the face of job loss and economic worry in my hometown and even in my own family,” Pawlenty said.

The former governor mentioned several times that he grew up in a meat-packing town and worked in a labor union for seven years. “I understand this issue,” Pawlenty said when asked about the recent labor fight in Wisconsin. “We’re not against hardworking men and women. It’s not about bashing unions, it’s about being pro-job.”

He added that he balanced budgets over his eight years as governor and that he has been to Iraq five times and Afghanistan three times.

At one point in the debate, Pawlenty said, “As I get better known, I’m getting more and more support.”

In a testament to Pawlenty’s stature among his rivals on stage, the Democratic National Committee’s first two “fact-check” emails about the event were targeted at Pawlenty.

The moderators also asked Pawlenty about the health care plan Romney implemented during his time as governor of Massachusetts, but the Minnesotan declined to go after his rival. “I’m not going to pick on him,” he said.

Instead, Pawlenty mentioned Barack Obama’s January 2008 speech after his victory in the Iowa presidential caucuses. Obama had pledged to pass a health care program that would earn support from Republicans. “He broke that promise,” Pawlenty said.

Santorum, meanwhile, used most of his answers to sharply critique Obama on health care, spending and foreign policy.

The candidates discussed waterboarding, with Pawlenty and Santorum saying they would support the practice depending on the circumstances. Santorum credited such “enhanced interrogation techniques” for enabling the government to find al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Near that point in the debate, an audience member shouted, “It’s illegal!”

All of the candidates on the stage, with the exception of long-shot Cain, said they would have released the photos of bin Laden after he was killed.

Pawlenty praised Obama for making “tough decisions and being decisive” when it came to the bin Laden mission but added, “That moment is not the sum total of America’s foreign policy.”

Santorum credited President George W. Bush for bin Laden’s killing and said Obama has done right when he has continued Bush’s policies. He said Obama has gone wrong when he has set out on his own, and he specifically criticized the president’s handling of the political protests in Iran.

Paul, an anti-war libertarian with a grass-roots following, called for troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan. He said that instead of spending “$1.5 trillion a year on our militarism,” the government should spend that money “back at home.”

Moderators asked Paul whether he was threatened by potential rival Rep. Michele Bachmann’s strength with the tea party. “She’s not here tonight,” Paul quipped about the Minnesota Republican.

Paul repeated his stance from his 2008 presidential campaign that he supports gay marriage. “The government should just be out of it,” Paul said. “They’ve caused more trouble than necessary.”

He earned applause for his stance on legalizing drugs, including heroin.

Moderators asked Santorum whether his desire to make English the nation’s official language could alienate Hispanic voters. The former Senator said he does not apologize for his position and said he believes it empowers immigrants to be integrated into society.

He also went after Obama for failing to pass immigration reform, given there was a solid Democratic majority on Capitol Hill during the first year of his presidency. “This is a political issue for the president,” Santorum said. “He’s playing political games with a very important group of people in America.”

Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, has been making the rounds courting tea party activists and said onstage that he supports a fair tax plan. He won the focus group hosted by Frank Luntz on Fox News following the debate.

Johnson is best known for his position favoring the legalization of marijuana, which he said he backed because it made sense for his state’s bottom line given high incarceration rates. “Everything was a cost-benefit analysis,” Johnson said. “Control it, regulate it, tax it.”

The Palmetto State will host a key early presidential primary in early 2012. No Republican nominee has claimed that prize without winning the South Carolina primary.