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.

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 below I just emailed to him myself at 1:49pm CST on May 6, 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:

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this will be the third consecutive year in which the federal government is running a deficit near or greater than $1 trillion. The solution to the government’s fiscal crisis must begin by cutting spending in all areas, particularly in those that can be better run at the state or local level. Last month I introduced legislation to do just that. And though it seems extreme to some—containing over $500 billion in spending cuts enacted over one year—it is a necessary first step toward ending our fiscal crisis…

My proposal, not surprisingly, has been greeted skeptically in Washington, where serious spending cuts are a rarity. But it is a modest proposal when measured against the size of our mounting debt. It would keep 85% of our government funding in place and not touch Social Security or Medicare. But by reducing wasteful spending and shuttering departments that are beyond the constitutional role of the federal government, such as the Department of Education, we can cut nearly 40% of our projected deficit and at the same time remove thousands of big-government bureaucrats who stand in the way of efficiency.

Here are some of his specific suggestions:

Health and Human Services

Agency/Program Funding Level Savings % Decrease

HHS [Discretionary Only] $72.493 $26.510 B 26%

The Department of Health and Human Services is the largest department in the federal government. The department includes programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, as well as other entitlement programs. HHS, and the programs within, remains one of the government’s largest challenges – and among the largest contributors to our fiscal crisis.

In fact, Medicare alone has a $38 trillion unfunded liability, and will continue to grow until it eventually consumes all government outlays.

Unfortunately, there are a number of individuals who have failed to set aside savings, or have failed to plan adequately based on the assumption that they would be eligible for certain entitlement programs such as Medicare or Medicaid. These programs need to be reformed, not necessarily just cut, and therefore, this proposal does not include most of the mandatory spending at the HHS. However, because the department is so large, it would have been negligent to avoid other areas which can provide much needed government savings.

This proposal takes most of the agency’s discretionary programs back to FY2008 levels, and makes further reductions to the Public Health Service programs.

Food and Drug Administration: Reduce 62 Percent

The Food and Drug Administration is another example of an agency that continues to expand every year in power and funding. New FDA powers granted by the recent Food Safety Modernization Act provide examples of the most recent growth of federal government overreach, granting the government further intrusion into the nation’s food supply.

Health Resources and Services Administration: Reduce 34 Percent

One way to combat illegal immigration is to remove the benefits our country provides to non-citizens. The Health Resources and Services Administration provides funding for 1,645 free health clinics for migrant workers all over the United States, contributing to the incentives for illegal immigrants to take advantage of our country and its taxpayers.

These clinics are an unnecessary burden, and do not serve the interests of Americans.

Indian Health Services: Reduce 46 Percent

The federal government’s Indian Health Services agency is notoriously wrought with fraud. A June 2009 Government Accountability Office reports that “millions of dollars in property and equipment continue to be lost or stolen.” It is time to put an end to this blatant government waste and tighten the belt on such programs.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Reduce 28 Percent

The annual budget for the Centers for Disease Control also keeps increasing annually, in spite of “cost-saving efforts” by the department in the way of travel expenses and contract reductions to the tune of $100 million. It seems no matter how much money is appropriated to this or any government agency, they find a “need” for it. It is time for the CDC to work aggressively to find savings in other areas, particularly focusing on domestic priorities rather than spending billions on overseas initiatives.

National Institute of Health: Reduce 37 Percent

President Obama’s FY2011 budget calls for a $1 billion increase in funding to the National Institutes for Health. Reducing federal grants in this area would realize billions in savings. Each of the HHS cuts called for in this proposal will stop the bleeding in these ever-increasing budgets 

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 11pm CST on May 5, 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:

Many in Washington think that a one-year, $500 billion spending cut is too bold. But the attendees at the newly formed Senate Tea Party Caucus say, “Bring on the cuts! And then, bring on more!” My Republican colleagues say they want a balanced-budget amendment. But to have any semblance of credibility we must begin to discuss where we will cut once it passes. My proposal is a place to start.

Here are some of his specific suggestions:

Energy

Agency/Program Funding Level Savings % Decrease

Energy $0 $44.186 B 100%

Created in 1977, the purpose and intent of the Department of Energy was to regulate oil prices. The DoE today reflects an agency that encompasses national security activities such as nuclear weapon production, maintenance, and cleanup which are better suited for the Department of Defense, and other activities that are nothing more than corporate handouts.

In addition, the DoE has provided research grants and subsidies to energy companies for the development of newer, cleaner forms of energy. All forms of energy development are subsidized by the federal government, from oil to nuclear, wind, solar, and bio-fuels, however these subsidies and research are often centered on forms of energy that can survive without subsidies. This drives the cost of energy up for all American taxpayers. The market has always provided new forms of energy development without governmental interference; it is time for the free market to start taking the reins.

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 7:43am CST on May 4, 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:

A real discussion about the budget must begin now—our economy cannot wait any longer. For 19 months, unemployment has hovered over 9%. After a nearly $1 trillion government stimulus and $2 trillion in Federal Reserve stimulus, the Washington establishment still believes that we can solve this problem with more federal spending and the printing of more money.

That’s ridiculous, and the American people have had enough.

Here are some of his specific suggestions:

Agency/Program Funding Level Savings % Decrease

Military $673.500 B $47.581 B 6.5%

National defense is the primary constitutional function of the federal government. However, that does not mean that the Department of Defense should receive a blank check without serious oversight. In order to supply our troops with the tools they need, it makes sense to prioritize spending where it is needed most—rather than to keep borrowing from other countries, many of which we pay to defend. (The United States’ Top 10 creditors: China, Japan, Caribbean Banking Centers, Oil Exporters, Russia, United Kingdom, Brazil, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Taiwan)

Since 2001, military expenditure has increased by nearly 120 percent; when you subtract the cost of the two conflicts we are currently fighting that still puts military spending at a 67 percent increase. National defense remains the nation’s No. 1 priority. However, the levels of defense spending are no longer justifiable to securing our country, especially given that our defense spending has surpassed the defense budgets of all other countries combined. 

Proposing cuts to the Defense budget is no longer an eccentric idea; recently Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, typically the guardian of Defense budgets and often arguing the need for more money, has recently proposed spending cuts totaling $100 billion. That said, even though Secretary Gates’ proposals are genuine, they still allow the DoD to grow into a $1 trillion military by 2030 – nearly the amount we spent on all discretionary spending in 2008.

Many of Secretary Gates’ proposals will be included in the $48 billion in Defense spending cuts proposed, but the proposal will also include reduction in spending from programs like realigning the 750 overseas bases in 63 different countries (including the sale of buildings and assets at unused/vacant overseas bases), turning over responsibility for security in Iraq and Afghanistan to local forces, reducing the size of military personnel through natural attrition, reducing the size of the civilian employment, and focusing on waste, fraud, and abuse.

– The savings proposed are reductions based on FY2011 estimates (Defense is not further reduced to FY2008 levels)

– Relative to FY2010 levels, this proposal reflects a 2.7 percent decrease of all military spending. 

Additional:  

War funding from 2001 to 2010 has cost the taxpayer $1.109 trillion. That amount doesn’t include the $159  billion that will likely be spent funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for FY2011. The proposal seeks to reduce war funding for FY2011 by $16 billion, in other words to provide $144 billion (President Obama has requested $117 billion for FY2012, $27 billion dollars below our proposed level). 

The proposal includes transferring the primary functions of the Department of Energy to DoD, including  nuclear weapon procurement and disposal of nuclear waste. 

The proposal includes shifting the United States Coast Guard to the DoD, a transfer that will promote  uniformity, administrative savings, and reduce duplicative functions. 

The United States Coast Guard has long been considered an essential part of our military reediness throughout its long history. Title 14 of the United States Code states “The Coast Guard was established January 28, 1915, shall be a military service and a branch of the armed forces of the United States at all times.” Upon the declaration of war or when the President directs, the Coast Guard operates under the authority of the Department of the Navy. 

In 2003, the Coast Guard was transferred from the Department of Transportation to the newly formed Department of Homeland Security. Currently, the Coast Guard has been working with the Navy in Operation Iraqi Freedom, anti-piracy operations, and anti-terrorist smuggling organizations.

With all this work for the DoD, common sense would suggest a move from the Department of Homeland Security to the DoD.