Budget watchers expect the release this week of the highly debated federal budget, and it's probably going to top $1 trillion despite ongoing efforts to cut it.
“Spending cuts” have been the mantra in Congress, but when it comes to what gets cut and how much, well, things get nasty.
Earlier this year, when the government faced a shutdown and bickering over the debt ceiling raged, a “super committee” was formed to plan ways to whack away at the huge national deficit.
Of course, the committee broke up with no plausible plan in hand — again partisan bickering over taxes and what to cut was its downfall.
So, it seems a bit odd to me to learn that the proposal calls for cutting the budget for the Government Accountability Office some $30 million to $40 million.
The GAO is the nonpartisan auditing arm that serves as a watchdog on all federal spending.
The GAO estimates that it saves taxpayers $81 for every dollar it spends by ferreting out wasteful spending through a range of annual audits. Its findings are rarely questioned and often embraced by Congress, where it gets high marks for its work.
And a recent article on the proposed cuts to the GAO shows that one of the most ardent fiscal conservatives and critics of wasteful government spending, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., thinks cutting the GAO budget make no sense at all.
“Congress has proved incapable of finding answers to the debt crisis, and now it is threatening to muzzle those who can,” Coburn told columnist James R. Carroll.
Coburn outlined a long history of Congress cutting the GAO budget, 13 percent of its budget and 40 percent of its workforce since 1992.
With Coburn on the point, chances are the cuts will not happen.
But the question becomes “Why is the GAO even on the radar in the first place?”
Plenty of answers might exist for that, but one likely scenario involves some lawmakers who created or who supported wasteful programs that fell into the sights of the GAO.
Meanwhile, it looks like the federal deficit for the current fiscal year might not hit $1 trillion for the first time in four years, the Congressional Budget Office reports.
The projected $973 billion deficit compares with $1.3 trillion the previous fiscal year. Happy New Year!
Resources:
- http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20111203/…
- http://www.gao.gov/
- http://online.wsj.com/article/…
- http://www.cbo.gov/
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