Letter to the Honorable Michael Enzi, Chairman of the Budget Committee and the Honorable Bernie Sanders, Ranking Member of the Budget Committee - Offer of 'The Waste Report' to FY2017 Budget

Letter

Dear Chairman Enzi and Ranking Member Sanders:

As Chairman of the Federal Spending Oversight subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee I am charged with examining all federal expenditures and protecting taxpayers from waste. In that capacity and pursuant to Section 301 (d) of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974, this letter sets forth my views and estimates of the President's budget and current fiscal situation of the United States and I ask for your consideration and inclusion in the FY 2017 budget.

The Federal Government has racked up over $19 trillion in federal debt, over 100 percent of our nation's Gross Domestic Product. That comes out to over $60,000 per person alive today. Some believe we never have to pay this, that we can simply outlive and inflate away our debt burden. I do not share that view, but even those who do cannot ignore our interest burden. President Obama's budget assumes $303 billion in interest payments next year. That is almost $1,000 per person (including children) that must be paid this year and even more next year. We must balance our budget and begin paying down our debt. Our problems are real and cannot be ignored or glossed over.

During my time in the Senate, I've proposed three budgets that balance within 5 years. I believe this is a critical course of action and ask you to pursue the same. It means truly looking at the role of government and doing only what is within the Federal Government's charge as laid out in the Constitution.

On September 28, 2008 then Senator Obama said in the course of seeking the office he now holds, "[a]nd when I'm president, I will go line by line [through the budget] to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely." The budget submitted on February 8, 2016 was President Obama's eighth and final budget. It is $618 billion, in real dollars (inflation adjusted) larger than when President Obama made that pledge. With a 20 percent increase in real spending, it is unfathomable that the President made any really attempted to live up to his campaign pledge to go through the budget line-by-line to eliminate unwise spending.

Fortunately, I and several other members of the Senate have been going through the budget line by line, identifying wasteful, unneeded, and ridiculous spending. My approach is to issue a report each week documenting just one example of wasteful government spending. Though some weeks we identify a boondoggle costing just a few thousand dollars in less than a year I have chronicled over $1.12 billion in clearly wasteful spending.

Despite this, I was shocked to find that HR 2029 the FY 2016 Omnibus Appropriation Act (which both of you and I voted against) actually increased funding for many of the agencies and programs where I and others have specifically found substantial waste.

This highlights a clear problem, there is a disconnect between the politics of spending and the responsibilities of governing. Some champion increased funding for science but ignore the National Science Foundation using the money it already has to fund a climate change video game to be used as propaganda, or their study of how to have to perfect first date, or when the National Institute of Health funds a conference on balding. We all want to support our Veterans, but we let them and every American down when returning solders are relegated to waiting lists while the VA finds somehow $8 million for solar panels it never used.

The list just goes on and on. Some rail against the cost of college yet never bat an eye at spending millions of dollars bringing foreign kids to America to attend our community colleges, but not for long enough to get an Associate's degree. Others have made a career advocating for education funding, pointing to outdated science labs and diminished sports programs; but those same advocates never give a second thought to why we are paying for Pakistani kids to go to Space Camp or funding a professional cricket league in Afghanistan. Some talk about the need for more funding to the military to build the best fighting force on the globe, but never ask how losing $29 million of heavy equipment or build historic models of Air Force bases does any good for our troop on the battle field.

It is hard to see how programs can be underfunded politically, while operationally they have money to burn. I hope you will take this waste of taxpayer dollars seriously. Former Budget Chairman, Senator Patty Murray often said a budget is more than numbers, that it is really a statement of our priorities as a nation. My staff has estimated that some 155,479 average American taxpayers saw their entire tax liability go to this wasteful spending last year, just on the waste I have exposed. When the government wastes money, is says to those hard working Americans who paid those tax dollars that they are not a priority. I hope you will make them a priority in this budget.

I've included each of my waste reports, including today's, at the end of this letter and have categorized them by budget function. I recognize the budget resolution cannot proscribe specific policies but rather sets overall functional totals and committee allocations. I recommend you incorporate a reduction in spending equal to these items of waste as you make your policy assumptions for each functional total and reflect those savings in the 302(a) committee allocations. In instances where a spending reduction is inappropriate, I recommend you include spending neutral, cap adjustments or reserve funds to facilitate greater oversight and program integrity activities.

Additionally, I recommend you incorporate to the extent possible, several process reforms. Earlier this year, I introduced the Legislative Performance Review Act of 2016, which aims at dealing with the over $300 billion in appropriations made each year to programs whose authorizations have expired. I recognize that not all of this spending is wasteful, but when programs have not been reviewed for over 30 years in some cases, it is hard to believe they are still as effective as when they were created if they ever were. This creates significant peril in the budget process; how can you make informed assumptions in building your budget when so much discretionary spending is left on autopilot? I believe it is appropriate, within the jurisdiction of the Senate Budget Committee, and the parameters of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 to at the least include in a budget resolution a point of order to strike from appropriations acts spending that is not made pursuant to a current authorization.

Further, I want to draw your attention to end-of-year spending. Research has shown that spending the last week of the fiscal year is as much as five times higher than the average of the preceding 51 weeks. More troubling is that the last day of the fiscal year, and only that day, spending significantly moves to the Pacific Time Zone to allow three more hours of spending. The only possible reason for this is to expend funds before they expire and is clearly wasteful. I've introduced legislation, The Bonuses For Cost-Cutters Act to afford federal employees, who see this waste first hand, a sort of whistleblower process run by Inspectors General to prevent this kind of waste. I ask that you make a policy assumption in Function 920 that reflects some level of saving that result from the adoption of this legislation.

Finally, each year the Government Accountability Office issues a report on duplicative spending within the federal government. It is clearly wasteful to have multiple programs, each with their own overhead, working to combat the same problems. I ask that you assume some reduction in spending related to consolidation of duplicative spending. Just as important, is that Congress not create new duplication. I ask that you include in your resolution a direction to the Congressional Budget Office that they include in their cost estimates of legislation some assessment of the extent to which such legislation creates new duplication in the Federal Government, recognizing this will likely require them to coordinate with the Government Accountability Office. Since the Budget Committee has jurisdiction over CBO and both CBO and GAO are agencies of the Legislative Branch, I see no reason why such provision in a budget resolution would violate the budget law and could not be included in a concurrent resolution.

I believe, with over $19 trillion in federal debt, we can no longer proceed with budgeting as usual. These cuts and reforms will not balance the budget, although that is in fact what we need to do. I have proposed three balanced budgets that show it can be done, and there are other plans worth reviewing such as your Penny Plan as well. The recommendations in this letter are just a few modest, but critical steps toward that end. We must go line-by-line to root out waste and we must be creative in how we budget. I hope you give these recommendations the seriousness of thought that I have given them and include them in your budget.

Sincerely,

Senator Rand Paul, M.D.

Chairman-Federal Spending Oversight Subcommittee

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee

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