TRUMPING ZIKA

[Originally published at:http://www.newsmax.com/ScotFaulkner/budget/2016/09/14/id/748321/ ]

How do you spell fiscal fiasco? “Z-I-K-A”.

The battle over funding necessary research to combat the spreading Zika Virus has ground Congress to a halt.

The Obama Administration has plead poverty and asked for $1.9 billion in additional funds. Congress decided to exploit this urgency and necessity by loading up the legislation with politically charged amendments. Votes on such amendments are used by both parties to fuel fund-raising appeals.

Once again, the Washington, DC Establishment is putting partisan fund-raising ahead of the health and safety of Americans.

It gets worse – $21 billion in unspent unobligated funds are already laying around the very programs and agencies charged with fighting Zika.

On August 26, Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and James Lankford (R-OK) sent a letter to the Secretary Burwell of Health and Human Services (HHS) calling her out on these unexpended balances. She responded back on September 1, asserting she had already “repurposed” $374 million and could not do anything more.

Unfortunately, Burwell’s response contradicts President Obama’s declaration that $589 million has been “repurposed”, and the fact that only $180 million has actually been spent.

Washington’s budgetary “hide and seek” needs to stop.

Every Federal Department and Agency ends the fiscal year with unspent funds. Former Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) exposed this in his ground breaking report “Money for Nothing” issued in June 2012. Since his report, the amount of federal funds sitting doing nothing, and because they are unobligated will continue to do nothing, has soared to $909 billion.

This nearly $1 trillion in tax dollars are hiding in plain site. Go to the Office of Management and Budget website. Look up “budget” and “assets”. Every penny of federal spending is reported and categorized. Accounting code “1941” is for “unexpired unobligated balances”. Fiscal years 2015 (actual) and 2016 & 2017 (projected) are listed.

It does not take a certified accountant to realize there are a lot of “1941” line items in every part of the federal budget, each totaling millions of dollars. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) uncovered 7,500 expired grant accounts spread through HHS’s Payment Management System, all with funds that will never be used.

The two front line agencies charged with researching and fighting Zika are the Center for Disease Control (CDC), with $1.27 billion in unobligated funds, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with $722 million in unobligated funds. Both program directors have testified that they are completely out of money.

It is unseemly to play bureaucratic and partisan games with peoples’ lives.

16,000 Americans have become infected by Zika, mostly in Puerto Rico. So far 17 American babies have been born with birth defects and another 5 died in miscarriages. This is just the beginning. Zika has substantially impacted Brazil, with approximately 1.5 million cases. Encephalitis type illnesses are causing memory loss and depression in adults, while neurological birth defects (such as smaller frontal lobes) have risen 400% since 2014.

Congress is racing the clock on funding the federal government past September 30, 2016. Members spent more time this year in Republican and Democrat fund-raising call centers than doing their job.

This Congressional negligence means yet another fiscal cliff, with the usual government shutdown hysteria ending in a Continuing Resolution (CR). This year’s battleground is already strewn with political explosives. Conservatives want to ban Planned Parenthood from using federal funds to screen pregnant women for Zika. Liberals somehow think banning Confederate Flags has something to do with public health.

Washington, DC is infested with political parasites and infected with arrogant opportunism.

It is time to consider a revolutionary cure, which includes stopping the budget games and spending tax dollars wisely.

Both sides should listen to Trump’s call for putting America, and Americans, first.

TRUMPING THE BUDGET

[Published in http://www.newsmax.com/ScotFaulkner/budget-congress-cronies-omb/2016/08/23/id/744737/ ]

It is time for Trump to do what he does best – expose how the Washington, DC Establishment lies its way to expanding government and helping its cronies.

Donald Trump has an historic opportunity to reframe and reset the budget battles that have plagued Washington, DC for years.

Members of Congress, when they return after their longest summer break in over fifty years, will be teetering on a chasm of their own making.  They will have only seventeen legislative days to pass twelve Appropriation bills.  Only a handful cleared the House prior to its long recess and none were considered in the Senate.  This guarantees much “sound and fury” ending in an Omnibus Appropriations bill, with several continuing resolutions to avoid a government shutdown.

Posturing by the Congress, the White House, candidates, and the media will reach fever pitch around the time of the first Presidential Debate on September 26.

Trump’s role in defusing this latest fiscal bomb can take several forms.

First, reveal how $2.405 trillion is just laying around doing nothing. 

Since President Obama took office, $914.8 billion in unexpended, unobligated, funds have piled up across the federal government. Obama never conducted the “budget sweeps” done by all his predecessors. The details are reported under “Assets and Balance Sheets” on page ten of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) budget. 

Another $1.028 trillion remains unexpended among general accounts and $461 billion remains unspent in trust funds.  While these funds are technically obligated, the fact that they have languished for years raises questions about their use and their management.

Second, reveal the red herring of entitlements.  Everyone knows that the only way to truly stop massive federal spending and debt is to reform entitlements.  The trap is that the required radical reform will not happen anytime soon.  It is like asking an overweight “couch potato” to suddenly jump up and win the Olympics’ Marathon.  No one in Congress, the Executive Branch, or the multitude of stakeholders is ready or willing to make entitlement reform happen.

The alternative is to prepare for tackling entitlements by first working on those budget issues that are long overdue.  This should appeal to anyone not lining their, and their cronies, pockets with federal favors.

The first move is slamming the door shut on filling federal vacancies.  This would cut $350 billion a year in personnel costs. This freeze would take advantage of Executive Branch attrition of 60,000+ employees a year through retirements and voluntary departures. Each agency head could submit waivers to OMB for those jobs they consider essential for their missions.

Not every retired government worker needs to be replaced. In fact, the Defense Department has already begun to leverage selective hiring freezes for a five year “delayering” initiative to eliminate 1,260 positions and save $1.9 billion over five years.  Even under Obama, officials admit not every layer of management (up to 23 layers in some agencies) is needed. Just think how much they could save if they were sincere.

The second way to immediate fiscal sanity is to cut $650 billion in government waste.  Every year, the General Accountability Office (GAO) and 73 Inspector General Offices find over $650 billion in ongoing waste. This waste is documented in 768 GAO reports containing hundreds of recommendations for operational improvement, and 8,760 audits and investigations conducted by the 73 Inspector General Offices among the Cabinet departments and independent agencies of the Executive Branch. 

That translates into $6.5 trillion in possible spending cuts or cost avoidance, over the next ten years, without harming one legitimate beneficiary of government services. Unfortunately, these findings and recommendations are regularly ignored by the Washington Establishment.

Congress, the Executive Branch, and the media are ignoring 9,528 ways to cut government waste every year.

Trump can make the professionals at the GAO and Inspector General offices “rock stars”.  He can look into the camera and say, “No matter how liberal or how conservative you are – you want the government to stop wasting your money.” 

These could be the first steps in shaping Trump’s management revolution as President. They are all bi-partisan issues.  Trump can then build upon these successes to solve the more divisive issue of entitlement reform.

Exposing the truth, and saving billions of dollars, “what do you have to lose?”

THE DEATH OF OVERSIGHT

Previously published at: http://www.newsmax.com/ScotFaulkner/politicians-constitutional-congress-appropriation/2016/06/03/id/732179/

Congress is losing its Constitutional tug of war with the Executive Branch. 

Politicians and pundits can point fingers, but the death of Congressional power is a suicide not a homicide.  They are doing it to themselves.  Congress is allowing the current Administration to get away with increasingly bold power grabs.  The result is an unaccountable government.  

Congress can control the Executive Branch through its Constitutional power of the purse.  What is funded exists and grows, what isn’t funded shrinks or vanishes.  The current Congress is not doing this.  Worse, it is neglecting its fundamental role in government oversight. Congress has lost its willingness to tie funding to adherence to the law and Congressional intent

The most appalling situation is in the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. For the second year in a row, Congress is way behind performing its basic responsibility of passing Appropriation bills.  Only two have made it onto the House Floor.  None have been considered by the full Senate.

In the past, Appropriations Committees met to build the case for spending public funds.  Administration witnesses made their case for spending.  Appropriation Committee Members made their alternative case, and either tore down or supported what the Administration witnesses proposed.  What should occur is a dialogue designed to align Congressional intent, and Executive Branch actions, to public spending.  What should emerge is legislation filled with spending numbers.  Supporting these numbers should be a narrative, in the hearing record and committee reports, building a compelling case for how and why public finds are being spent, or not spent.

None of this is happening in the current Congress.  The result is Congress ceding spending control to the Administration and destabilizing the Constitutional balance between coequal Branches.

In 2015, there were 128 House Appropriation hearings prior to marking-up legislation. In 2016 there were only 88.  The House only listened to 253 Administration witnesses. Their oversight was conducted by hearing from only seven of the 73 Inspector Generals.  No one from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was involved.   No one from oversight groups documenting government waste and abuse were heard.

It gets worse.  In the 1980s and 1990s, Appropriation hearings lasted three or more hours.  Hearings in 2016 averaged 77 minutes.  When you factor in the opening remarks from the Chair and Ranking Member and the opening statement of the main witness, less than 25 minutes were devoted to Q&A per witness. 

These 88 Hearings devoted minimal time to major national concerns.  Only two hours were spent on EPA funding, the Secret Service less than one hour, and less than one hour was spent on the crucible of Republican populism – the Bureau of Land Management. 

No wonder only three to five Members attended each hearing; even though all Subcommittees have at least eleven Members (Defense has sixteen).

House Committees broadcast their hearings online and archive them as podcasts.  None of the 47 Senate Appropriation hearings were broadcast or archived.  The public only knows that three Inspector Generals appeared, and there was no one from the GAO or government watchdog groups. The public remains uninformed as to what 121 witnesses had to say beyond the text of their prepared remarks. 

Republicans are missing their annual opportunity to build their case, on the official record, for the spending battles to come and to sway the electorate on who is best at stewarding public funds.  Swapping sound bites on friendly media outlets is a poor substitute for proper oversight.

Republicans are being negligent to the point of malfeasance by ignoring government accountability. 

BUDGET BACCHANAL 2015

Also published at http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/budget-bacchanal-2015/article/2571132 and https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/budget-bacchanal-scot-faulkner?trk=prof-post


The biggest fiasco of the year is about to occur. No, it is not a Presidential debate. It is the travesty of the budget battle for Fiscal 2016.


The budget battle will begin in earnest after Labor Day. Republicans will take things to the brink without a strategy or preparing their case for frugality. This is a recipe for disaster.


Republicans have been in charge of the entire Legislative Branch since their landslide victory on November 4, 2014. When Members of Congress adjourned for their five-week August Recess not one Appropriation Bill had passed. The House had passed only six of the required twelve Appropriation bills. The Senate had not taken one vote. After eight years of telling voters Republicans could govern better than Democrats the budgetary results are actually worse.


When Congress reconvenes on September 8, 2015 it will have only ten legislative days to avoid a government shut down or continuing resolution. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew also formally requested another raise in the Debt Ceiling. What have they been doing for nine months?


So far there has only been posturing about defunding federal support of Planned Parenthood and somehow punishing the Environmental Protection Agency for its obtuse overreach. The collective fiscal impact of these actions is microscopic. No Republican, not even any of the Presidential candidates, is offering real solutions to reining-in rampant government spending and debt.


At the same time, federal agencies are proceeding with their annual rite of spending over a third of their budgets in the last three months of the fiscal year. Each year, potential savings evaporate in an orgy of expedited procurements and questionable spending during the mad dash to spend every penny before midnight on September 30. No efforts at frugality here; agencies would rather guard their budgetary turf than save money for taxpayers.


Even Tony Scott, Obama’s Chief Information Officer for the Executive Branch, has called out his colleagues declaring the year end spending binge, “a mad dash to load up the shopping carts”. No Republican has raised their voice against year-end spending. Holding agencies to spending only 25 percent of their funds in the 4th quarter would save $105 billion a year.


It gets worse – the brinksmanship over spending and raising the debt ceiling ignores a set of mind boggling facts.

• Nearly a trillion dollars in unobligated funds are hiding in plain sight. Page 11, Table 1, of the Office of Management and Budget’s spreadsheets for assets and balances lists $909,122,000,000 as unspent and unobligated. President Obama is the first President since Lyndon Johnson to not require a “budget sweep” to return these orphaned funds to general use. There is no reason for a debt ceiling increase when they could resolve the matter by a push of a button.
• There is $650 billion dollars in annual documented waste that could guide budget cuts. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), and 73 Agency and Department Inspector Generals, publish an average of 9,000 reports every year that document this waste to specific accounts and programs. These public reports also provide specific recommendations for how to stop the ongoing hemorrhaging of tax dollars. In 2015, the House Appropriators held 128 hearings relating to agency funding requests. Only four of those hearings included Inspector Generals. None included the GAO. None of these hearings included outside oversight groups who document and publicize government waste.
• None of the House passed Appropriation bills call for hiring freezes or any slowdown in expanding the number of bureaucrats. Each year the Federal Executive Branch loses over 60,000 employees to retirements or voluntary departures. There was not one single hearing by Republicans to discuss ways to stop the treadmill of filling every vacancy no matter how obsolete or redundant. Federal agencies have 9 to 23 layers of management between front line workers and top officials. Are every one of these layers and every functionary needed? Republicans have never asked this question. An across the board hiring freeze would save $350 billion a year.

Let the games begin!


[Scot Faulkner served as Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives and on President Reagan’s White House Staff.]

CONGRESSIONAL COINSTAR

The annual spending fight is looming once again on Congress’ autumn horizon. This ritualized partisan combat over the debt and the deficit will once again dominate the news. Politicians and pundits will once again use dueling calculations to fuel their heated rhetoric without any hope of common ground or real results. This year may even feature dueling scholarly analyses on how rampant government spending may be a good thing. http://www.imf.org/external/np/seminars/eng/2013/fiscal/pdf/barro.pdf

There is a way for Congress to break out of this dismal cycle.

Every year the federal government has money left over. Lots of money.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) documented this in his “Money for Nothing” report:

"In total, the federal government is projected to end fiscal 2012 with more than $2 trillion in unexpended funds that will be carried over to next year, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. While more than two-thirds of this amount is obligated for specific purposes, $687 billion remains unobligated, meaning it is essentially money for nothing."

http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=612f09e3-e950-480e-84f8-1e54d2e6bc30  [pages 1-2]

Detailed charts on this phenomenon can be found at: “Balances of Budget Authority; Budget of the U.S. Government Fiscal Year 2012,” White House Office of Management and Budget, page 8; http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2012BALANCES/pdf/BUDGET-2012-BALANCES.pdf .

I first encountered this in 2007, when a project team was promoting development of a museum for the National Park Service. NPS leaders contended that they would need new funding to cover Phase I design costs. A few minutes reviewing OMB’s public documents uncovered NPS holding onto $73 million in “Unobligated balances carried forward”. This was more than enough to cover the $12.5 million in Phase I costs.

Welcome to Washington’s most secret budget game. Every Department and Agency, and program units within every Department and Agency, have unobligated funds squirreled away. This adds up to the $687 billion identified by Senator Coburn.

It would be an easy act of Congress to include a mandate for returning every agencies’ “Unobligated balances carried forward” as part of a budget resolution, continuing resolution, or within each appropriation bill.

Such a return of “Unobligated balances carried forward” to general use would immediately cut the annual federal deficit in half. It would also delay any increase in the federal debt limit by at least ten months. Most importantly, it would be an easy bi-partisan vote for sound fiscal management.

Think of these “Unobligated balances carried forward” as the coins every family has stashed in drawers, under couches, in the glove compartments of cars, and maybe in a piggy bank or pickle jar. Many years ago Coinstar https://www.coinstar.com/  found a way to make money by installing machines to sort coins and turn these extraneous “found funds” into usable dollars.

Bringing $685 billion of our unused tax dollars back into use, and avoiding the need for $685 billion in new spending, is as simple as a family taking their pickle jar of coins to a sorting machine.

Why can’t Members of Congress, or their staff, figure this stuff out?

Fear & Loathing in Washington, DC

The Executive Branch refuses to acknowledge that it has broad latitude on how to implement the Sequester. This may be good politics, but it is a disservice to our country. Gaming the system will not solve America’s fiscal problems or promote collaboration over combat.

[1] Gaming the system - Level 1
Under the Budget Control Act, the Federal Government can ignore the Sequester, for now.

The Sequester only happens if, at the end of a fiscal year, spending exceeds designated levels under the Budget Control Act. Therefore, the Sequester does not happen on March 1, 2013 but later, when it is necessary to, “eliminate a budget-year breach”. There are six months to cut spending and avoid the Sequester.

[2] Gaming the system - Level 2
There is no immediate “day of reckoning”.

The impact of the Sequester will not be felt until July for most jurisdictions and late August when schools start their next academic year. Federal funds for teachers, police, and many grant programs are sent to the states annually or quarterly. State governments then disburse these funds, matched with state and county contributions, to these services. States, counties, municipalities, and school districts start their fiscal year on this coming July 1, 2013 not last October 1, 2012.

[3] Gaming the system - Level 3
The “day reckoning” can be avoided using normal OMB methods.

Agencies spend their funds unevenly as contracts, travel, and personnel actions occur sporadically during the fiscal year. If everything was evenly paced, 25% would be left unspent on July 1 (to cover the final three months of a fiscal year - July, August, September). Unevenly paced spending can leave as much as 40% unspent in some agencies on July 1.

OMB provides budget guidance in June telling each agency how much they have left to spend. Agencies accelerate their fourth quarter spending to spend everything they have. If they don’t do this the excess money is returned to the Treasury, and the agency may have trouble justifying future spending increases. Imagine if remaining balances exceeding 25% were returned to the Treasury on July 1 – Sequester solved!

[4] Gaming the system - Level 4
A budget sweep could prevent Sequester now and for the next six years.

OMB could at any time conduct a budget sweep to reclaim unexpended civilian balances among revolving funds and contingency funds. That would bring $687 billion back to the Treasury for the current fiscal year. That is over half the entire ten year Sequester or 13 times more than the current fiscal year Sequester. Sequester solved!

[5] Gaming the system - Level 5
OMB could enforce its own guide lines and avoid the Sequester completely.

OMB uses a Current Services Analysis for modeling what it costs to maintain exactly the same level and scope of services in the next year’s budget. For decades agencies have been funded well above their CSA levels. The budget battles are always over how much to increase spending. They are never about cutting or even maintaining CSA levels. In the current CSA the Sequester actually creates a net $110 billion increase in federal spending over the next ten years. Enforce CSA levels and Sequester solved!

[6] Gaming the system - Level 6
Freezing federal hiring would meet all budget limits and end the Sequester!

By properly managing personnel actions the Budget Control Act targets could be reached in three years instead of ten with no furloughs. Currently there are over 4,900 vacancies among domestic agencies and our government still operates. There is currently another 1,358 civilian vacancies in the Department of Defense and we are safe. Salaries and benefits for just these vacancies total approximately $62 billion/year for domestic agencies and $17.4 billion/year for Defense. In a typical year an additional 29,000 positions become vacant government-wide. This means that over $350 billion in personnel costs could be avoided if hiring was frozen. Some positions may be deemed critical and necessary for filling, but the vast majority of federal vacancies serve Americans better by remaining vacant.

As each hour passes, politicians and pundits are ratcheting up their rhetoric. They need to stop pointing fingers and wringing hands. It is time to make real decisions based on facts.

It is time to be statesmen, not showmen.

Scot Faulkner is a former chief administrative officer for the U.S. House of Representatives. His articles on government reform appear at citizenoversight.blogspot.com

NLRB's Homework Assignment

One of the reasons Washington, DC is so dysfunctional is that no one does their homework. The latest case in point, literally and figuratively, is Noel Canning v. National Labor Relations Board.

On January 25, 2013, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously ruled that President Barack Obama's three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on January 4, 2012 were unconstitutional. These appointments raised eyebrows because: (1) they were made just one day after the expiration of Member Craig Becker's term. This left the five-seat Board with only two confirmed members - Mark Pearce and Brian Hayes. This meant the NLRB lacked a quorum to issue decisions; and (2) the circumstance that would allow a President to make “Recess Appointments” under Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution did not exist, because the Congress was in Pro Forma Session, not in a formal recess.

The case centered on Noel Canning challenging a February 8, 2012 NLRB decision on the grounds that its quorum only existed with the presence of invalid recess appointments. The D.C. Court of Appeals unanimously agreed.

There are many potential ripple effects from this decision, including some expansive language clarifying the Constitution’s “recess appointment” clause, dramatically limiting the circumstances when a President was empowered to act. This case is definitely bound for the U.S. Supreme Court with the potential of an historic ruling on the separation of powers between the Executive and Legislative Branches. [For more background on this issue read my earlier columns - http://citizenoversight.blogspot.com/2011/03/congressional-adjournments-unintended.html  and http://www.constitutingamerica.org/blog/blog/category/guest-constitutional-scholar-essayists/scot-faulkner/  ]

Overshadowing the broader Constitutional issues is the immediate issue of the continued operation of the NLRB in light of the ruling. The Court’s decision only invalidated the NLRB’s decision and stated the grounds. The Court did not issue any injunction against further NLRB activity.

Here is where everyone flunks their homework assignment. Today’s talk shows had every side tying themselves up in knots over whether it is legal to stop the NLRB’s activities, and if so, how. Some said cutting the pay of the NLRB Commissioners was one way to do it, but they did not know if had ever been done. Others said cutting pay was unconstitutional.

If only all these over paid talking heads, or their underpaid research staff, spent ten minutes on Google or simply knew someone who remembers the George Dunlop – Jamie Whitten fight of 1987. In 1987, Rep. Jamie L. Whitten, (D-MS) was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. George Dunlop was Assistant Secretary for Environment and Natural Resources at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Dunlop and Whitten had been antagonists since the days when Dunlop was Senator Jesse Helms' (R-NC) top agriculture staffer. Their battle came to a head in 1987 when Dunlop refused to attend one of Whitten’s hearings, opting to avoid another nasty and unproductive confrontation.

Whitten was not amused. The Chairman moved the FY 1988 USDA Appropriations bill through his subcommittee, the full Committee, and on to the House for consideration. It was soon discovered that FY1988 funding for Dunlop’s position had been omitted from the bill. Dunlop promptly met with Whitten, buried the hatchet, and funding for his position was added to the bill. Congress asserted its Constitutional power of the purse as a way of humbling a wayward Presidential appointee.

Thus, targeting positions through the Appropriations process is Constitutional. A little homework would have avoided all the “sturm und drang” on the talk shows. It also should serve as a guide for Republicans looking for ways to cut federal spending. There is nothing wrong with targeting specific programs, projects, positions, and offices to force the implementation of Inspector General and Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommendations. A much more rational way to deal with the debt instead of the meat axes unleashed through Sequestration.

Amazing where completing a homework assignment can lead.