|
Lots of folks, who talk about earmarks and pork have little understanding of the labyrinthine system that must be navigated in order for a federal agency to return funding to the Treasury.
Pundits opining about whether Governor Sarah Palin actually did or did not return funding, once earmarked for pork spending on unneeded bridges, are a case in point. These pundits do not seem to understand that the current appropriations system is designed so that returning money to taxpayers is almost impossible. I know, because I tried to do just that and encountered a bureaucracy that ruthlessly discourages such attempts.
Here's some background and the "Reader's Digest version" of how it works. Each year, Agency heads submit a budget to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and participate in a "budget defense" to justify their requests. OMB finalizes the Agency's budget, and then bundles all federal agency spending together in a rolled up master budget which the President reviews, approves and presents to Congress in early February.
In the case of many agencies, such as Transportation, DoD, Energy, Justice, GSA and DHS to name a few, many line items within the Budget are infrastructure projects. These infrastructure projects will occur in various States or Districts, and, often, success as a legislator is evaluated on how much "pork" Senators or Congressmen are able to bring home to their constituents.
Few in Congress are fighting to keep the overall spending down, except in States and districts not their own. Not to downplay the lengthy iterations and many nuances of the Congressional dealings, but, let's fast forward to the point where the Agency head, or the City officials or even, sometimes, a Governor decides that the project, the "pork", is not in the long term best interest of the Agency or the state, and decides to terminate the project.
Cutting pork engenders the hostility of Congress, especially, as I would learn, powerful Appropriators such as Senator Durbin, who, quite openly let you know that you will "pay" if favorite projects are not included.
Put another way, if an Agency head comes to the conclusion that a line item inserted in the budget is not wise or justified, the executive must fight OMB about when and where and how the funding can be returned to the Treasury, and must do the same with powerful members of Congress.
It is so difficult to run the gauntlet of approvals required from OMB to members of Congress, that very few Agency heads ever make the effort.
Difficult, yes, politically unpopular, absolutely. But it can happen.
Just last year, a division in GSA improved efficiencies within their department. They implemented a bunch of innovative ideas that allowed their division to save approximately $2 million in taxpayer money. This division was proud of their achievement, and they wanted to return the funding to the Treasury.
They were even more excited by the idea that they could serve as a role model for the rest of government.
If a small, 100 person entity could work hard and save $2 million, imagine what Agencies that have 300 thousand employees all working together might do? Certainly, the return of $2 million in unneeded spending was not going to make a huge dent on our $400 billion federal deficit, but it was a start, and I was an enthusiastic supporter of what they had achieved.
OMB was not happy that a federal agency wanted to return the savings of $2 million to the Taxpayer. Far from being pleased, OMB discouraged the returning the $2 million in unneeded funds.
Why? Was it because that small division would have put many pundits, number crunchers, management experts and legislators to shame, folks who had presided over the largest bloating of the federal budget in the past century? Perhaps. But it turns out that OMB had other special projects that they wanted to now fund with those savings-projects that had not proved their worth, often projects only tangentially connected with GSA's mission, but projects in which OMB had put a lot of political capital and for which an injection of $2M could shore up a flawed or failing endeavor.
Then, an even more outrageous fact emerged. Even with the funding and the will, there is no "express" lane to return budget savings to the Treasury. Any taxpayer savings must be deposited into an agency's "lapsed balance" fund, which must sit untouched, much like an escrow account, for the next five years. The alleged rationale is that the Congress and OMB want to make sure that the Agency doesn't still "need" the funding.
This excess of budgetary caution might seem like a good idea. But, that "lapsed balance" funding is never rotated out of the account and applied against an Agency's upcoming budget request to reduce the total that is being appropriated by Congress.
Instead, the "lapsed balance" becomes an off balance sheet item, and ultimately funds the "pet" projects of a select few. In my experience, these allocations are uncharted and murky waters. For, although the total lapsed balance funding at agencies runs into the staggering millions, few Agency heads and few in Congress see an accounting of the use of these funds, much less an audit of the expenditures.
Our government has no mechanism, and no interest, in encouraging or supporting federal agencies to find innovative ways to improve operations and save money, but rather encourages a "spend it all" philosophy.
So, when I see the media wax poltroonish and petty on the issue of why Governor Palin didn't return the funding from earmarks that were cut, I recall my experience trying to do the same, and ask you to consider that maybe she didn't because our current budget set up is a system that won't allow the return.
As the end of fiscal year approaches, and we see our government, even in this time of financial freefall, spending like a chocoholic let loose in Willy Wonka's factory, is it any wonder that we have been unable to retrain government employees away from a "use or lose" spending philosophy to a fiscally disciplined approach that does what is best for the American Taxpayer? |
