6th August 2011

Budget Cuts – budget cuts – everyone is losing their money! The federal government is broke! They are going to shut down! Well after what has been studied recently, it is very surprising that the US Government has been closed yet.

In the recent budget cuts, there seems to be an awful lot of complaining, moaning and growing for our nations two party system. To set the record straight, both parties were involved in making the mess listed below. This intricate detailed spider web of who did what is not important for the “blame game.” It will be noted that the administrations involved in helping make this mess is George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush and they are all three equally responsible for the crisis that we are having today.

Here are 10 of many budget cuts available on line at the Office of Budget Management. It can also be viewed through the White House web-site as well as the Congressional web-site. The cuts listed here are from waste, duplicated programs, and programs that are not working.

1.       $17 million in cuts from the HHS to address the issues of teen pregnancy prevention and provide quality prenatal care to teen mothers and families through the Pregnancy Assistance Fund; there is already a fund established in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The PAF is being cut which is run out of the Adolescent Family Life (AFL) Program.

2.       $23 million is being cut from the Agricultural, Forestry and Fishing Program in the HHS. Seems that (AFF) program overlaps with the National Institute of Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH) at the CDC with each other and neither is near as comprehensive as the same program with the USDA and Departments of Labor (DOL) programs. – There are 4 programs – dealing with Agricultural, Forestry and Fishing? According to documentation the CDC and HHS were not utilizing this program nor regulating it.

3.       $18 Million was cut from HUD. The Brownfields Economic Development Initiative (BEDI) was a smaller duplicate program of larger programs in HUD that addressed the same needs for local governments. Government Accountability office in 1999 reported $413 million was in a reserved obligated and $25 million distributed out.   

4.       $2 million cut from the Department of Labor to eliminate the Bureau Labor Statistics (BLS) International Labor Comparison program. This information is a collection of international comparisons to equivalent domestic hourly compensation costs and according to the study this information is very seldom used.

5.       $2,500 billion from the Department of Defense for C-17 transport aircraft production. What C-17s have already paid and ordered with the C-5 (which is a larger transport) is more than enough. The two have a life expectancy of about 30 years.

6.       $125 million from the Department of Labor in the Career Pathways Innovation Fund. This provides competitive grants to community college partnerships to help workers prepare for jobs in growing and emerging industries. The same funding was put into the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Program at 500 million annually from 2011 to 2014. The Career Pathways Innovation Fund would be a duplicate.

7.       Cut of $3 million to HHS for the program of Children and Families Services Job Demonstration Program through the Job Opportunities for Low-Income Individuals. This is a duplicate program in which the Department of Labor has $6 million to do the same thing and its program is more effective with an increasing budget for this and increasing the Green Jobs Innovation Fund.

8.       $318 million cut to end the Children’s Hospital Graduate Medical Education Payment Program through the HHS. This was supposed to be for competitive health workforce grant programs that will train more primary care providers. This money has set on the books for an entire year and has been redirected to the Medicaid GME to help with the health care cost of children on Medicaid to have been medical services.

9.       Cut $1 million from the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation which continues to operate until its current existing funds are expended. This was established in 1992 as a fellowship to encourage and support research study and labor designed to produce new discoveries in all fields of endeavor for the benefit of mankind. The Foundation has not consistently demonstrated clear outcomes from its awards and has high overhead costs since it began in 1992.

10.   Repeal to terminate coal subsidies that are costly to the American taxpayer and do little to create incentives to boost production or reduce energy prices in 4 areas for the Department of Energy – cuts totaling $2,579 billion dollars (gradually over 10 years.) It makes little to no sense to provide incentives for fossil fuel producers when the Nation’s priority is to increase the demand for and supply clean energy.  

This all comes to a total of $5,586 billion dollars. The only bad thing about all of this is that there seems to be the lack of accountability for this type of mismanagement. The only group of people that should be blamed in all of this is the American People! Wondering why? How many take the time to look up the annual budget every year? How many take the time to contact Washington, when something seems amiss?

The outcome assumption can prove very interesting though. $413 million dollars that HUD had in reserve could have gone to the Section 8 funding – which is broke according to the large HUD waiting list for each state. It could have also been directed to assist many homeowners that had their homes foreclosed which were guaranteed through HUD. It also seems that $19 million dollars was possibly used as a party fund for a foundation that basically did nothing. $318 million wasn’t actually cut but redirected and a total of $5.173 billion dollars was actually trimmed from the budget on the ten items listed.   

In our office there is a multi-racial President. It seems he may be trying. Whether or not he will succeed is another issue. So often, the American public criticizes the person in the office because they are not of their party. But what should be done, the Americans should be content with the leadership at hand but watch them like a “hawk.” That leadership includes Congress more so because there is more than one on the payroll. Being supportive of our Commander in Chief as well as the congressional body is vitally important for the overall health and well being of this united nation. Being supportive doesn’t mean give the leadership a free reign! After all shouldn’t there be a legacy for the children?  Be thankful to live in a free nation to express ourselves!