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THE PRESIDENT: Good morning, everybody. All across this country, Americans
are responding to difficult economic times by tightening their belts and making
tough decisions about where they need to spend and where they need to save. The
question the American people are asking is whether Washington is prepared to act
with the same sense of responsibility.
I believe we can and must do exactly that. Over the course of our first
hundred days in office, my administration has taken aggressive action to
confront a historic economic crisis. We’re doing everything that we can to
create jobs and to get our economy moving while building a new foundation for
lasting prosperity -- a foundation that invests in quality education, lowers
health care costs, and develops new sources of energy powered by new jobs and
industries.
But one of the pillars of this foundation is fiscal responsibility. We can
no longer afford to spend as if deficits don’t matter and waste is not our
problem. We can no longer afford to leave the hard choices for the next budget,
the next administration -- or the next generation.
That’s why I’ve charged the Office of Management and Budget, led by Peter
Orszag and Rob Nabors who are standing behind me today, with going through the
budget -- program by program, item by item, line by line -- looking for areas
where we can save taxpayer dollars.
Today, the budget office is releasing the first report in this process: a
list of more than 100 programs slated to be reduced or eliminated altogether.
And the process is ongoing.
I want to be clear: There are many, many people doing valuable work for our
government across the country and around the world. And it’s important that we
support these folks -- people who don’t draw a big paycheck or earn a lot of
praise but who do tough, thankless jobs on our behalf in our government. So this
is not a criticism of them.
At the same time, we have to admit that there is a lot of money that’s
being spent inefficiently, ineffectively, and, in some cases, in ways that are
actually pretty stunning.
Some programs may have made sense in the past -- but are no longer needed
in the present. Other programs never made any sense; the end result of a special
interest’s successful lobbying campaign. Still other programs perform functions
that can be conducted more efficiently, or are already carried out more
effectively elsewhere in the government.
One example of a program we will cut is a long-range radio navigation
system which costs taxpayers $35 million a year. This system once made a lot of
sense, before there were satellites to help us navigate. Now there’s GPS. And
yet, year after year, this obsolete technology has continued to be funded even
though it serves no government function and very few people are left who still
actually use it.
Another example is the National Institute for Literacy. Now, I strongly
support initiatives that promote literacy -- it’s critical -- but I oppose
programs that do it badly. Last year, nearly half of the funding in this program
was spent on overhead. So we’ve proposed cutting the $6 million for this program
in favor of supporting literacy efforts within the Department of Education which
use tax dollars more effectively and wisely.
We’re also closing an office maintained by the Department of Education in
Paris. This is an office that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to employ
one person as a representative to United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization, or UNESCO. Now, participation in UNESCO is very
important, but we can save this money and still participate using e-mail and
teleconferencing and a small travel budget.
In addition, we’re going to save money by eliminating unnecessary defense
programs that do nothing to keep us safe, but rather prevent us from spending
money on what does keep us safe. One example is a $465 million program to build
an alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. The Defense Department is
already pleased with the engine it has. The engine it has works. The Pentagon
does not want and does not plan to use the alternative version. That’s why the
Pentagon stopped requesting this funding two years ago. Yet it’s still being
funded. |
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发表于 2016-7-11 09:33:55