“Streamlining Government to Reduce Waste and Save Money”

Weekly Column
Senator Susan Collins
May 27, 2011

If you were spending beyond your means and piling up ruinous debt, you would be
forced to take a hard look at your expenses and eliminate all those things you really don’t need,
want or use.

The federal government is spending far beyond its means, running a $1.3 trillion deficit
this year and accumulating debt exceeding $14 trillion. Yet, American tax dollars continue to
pay for government agencies and programs that are redundant, overlapping, and inefficient.

There has never been any doubt that wasteful duplication of effort is a serious problem in
the federal government. But it was not until a recent report by the Government Accountability
Office (GAO) that we had overwhelming, quantifiable evidence exposing just how serious the
problem is. GAO’s conclusion that there are dozens of opportunities to eliminate duplication,
reduce operational costs, or enhance revenue is an urgent call to action. At a time when every
citizen’s share of the national debt tops $46,000, there simply can be no excuse for such waste.

This duplication and overlap serve neither the taxpayers nor the beneficiaries well. For
example, a low-income person with a disability may confront a bewildering maze of some 80
programs providing transportation assistance.

The report offers many other examples. Fifteen federal agencies are involved in food
safety. Three agencies run 18 food assistance programs, and seven agencies run more than 20
programs for the homeless.

There are 80 economic development programs across the government. There are more
than 100 programs for surface transportation, 82 for teacher quality, 44 for job training, and 17
for disaster preparedness and response. And the list goes on.

Perhaps the greatest irony of all is the fact that 20 agencies, housing 56 different
programs, are all redundantly trying to improve financial literacy of the American people. The
American people can teach the government a thing or two about financial literacy: in difficult
fiscal times, we should pay for something once, not dozens of times.

There are many causes of duplication. At times, a President, seeking to put his own
imprint on the budget to demonstrate his priorities, proposes a new program, despite the fact that
similar ones already exist. In other cases, it is Congress that creates the silo of a new initiative
without checking to see if a similar silo already exists. Committee jurisdictions contribute to the
problem as each committee carves out its own programs to respond to its constituency.
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There are no bad intentions at work here. Just the opposite - it is the proliferation of good
intentions – the desire to solve problems -- that has created this problem. But, to paraphrase
George Bernard Shaw, the road to fiscal ruin could be paved with good intentions.

The maze of duplication can be frustrating for citizens, and it is hardly trivial in a
financial sense. The multiple programs to promote ethanol production, for example, cost almost
$6 billion every year. Not only is that unacceptable when we have a $14 trillion debt, but it
deprives other competing priorities of scarce resources. I know the people of Maine would
rather have this money used to reduce the deficit or to find the next life-saving vaccine or to
support our brave and dedicated troops rather than to subsidize ethanol.

Another example of duplication is the proliferation of federal data centers. In 1998, there
were 432 centers. When GAO counted last summer, the number was approximately 2,100,
leading to more than 24,000 government web sites, and 1,000 separate human resources and
financial management systems. Of course, there has been incredible digitalization of every
aspect of society during that same period, so it makes sense that, as our world has gone digital
since 1998, so has the government.

Still, the amount of unused server capacity and inefficiencies in our data centers suggest
that this rapid-fire growth happened without ideal strategic planning. It is encouraging that the
Office of Management and Budget plans to reduce the number of data centers by 800 by 2015,
starting with the first round of 137 closures this year. And the savings in computer hardware and
software purchases are only part of it – the closing of just one unnecessary data center -- a
15,000-square foot facility near Washington -- will save $1.2 million in annual electricity costs.

Eliminating duplication and inefficiencies in government alone will not balance the
budget and pay off the debt, but it is a necessary and overdue step toward fiscal responsibility. It
will compel agencies to focus on their core missions and make programs easier to access for
citizens. Most important, it will help restore the trust of the American people in their
government.