Jonathan Weisman has a must-read article in the Wall Street Journal that should make any rational, semi-educated reader feel dismayed by the incompetence and wastefulness of the federal government.
Highlights:
The Office of Thrift Supervision, a division of the Treasury, identified unused phone lines costing $320,000.
…
The Justice Department estimates it can save $573,000 through fiscal 2010 by setting up its printers and copiers to use both sides of the paper. By emailing some documents instead of printing them out, the Department of Homeland Security will save $318,000.
Both Homeland Security and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have pledged to take the same step that has sent the newspaper industry into a tailspin: They will start getting their news online free, rather than renew their subscriptions. Homeland Security will save $47,160, or 0.0000026% of the deficit.
The Coast Guard realized that maintenance schedules for its 1,800 small boats assumed they were for recreational use such as water-skiing or bass-fishing. By adjusting maintenance schedules to reflect what the Coast Guard actually does, the agency discovered it can save $2 million a year.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is going to save $3.8 million by refurbishing and reusing or selling its emergency trailers — like the ones provided to people displaced by hurricanes — instead of ditching them.
Obama’s budget reductions have been ridiculed, and rightly so. Obama has cut $100 million from the federal budget. This works out to about .006% of this year’s projected deficit. Since the federal agency budget is $1 trillion, the reduction represents $1 for every $10,000 spent—not exactly a big savings.
To put it in perspective, the median household income in the United States is around $45,000. Obama’s cuts are equivalent to shaving $4.50 off the average household budget. That’s less than the cost of a meal at McDonald’s.
“Some of these cuts are so small they would be a rounding error of a rounding error in the federal budget,” said Brian Riedl, a federal budget expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation. They also show how “unbelievably outdated” the government is, he said.
“I mean, emailing around the daily press clips instead of printing them out and distributing them? That should not have been necessitated by a presidential order.”