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?”