Warner introduces spending accountability, transparency proposal
U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) today introduced legislation that increases federal fiscal transparency and accountability by establishing a single web-based platform to allow taxpayers and policymakers to more easily track all federal spending. The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA) is a Senate version of legislation introduced earlier this week by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
The proposal combines and incorporates the best of the Office of Management & Budget’s USASpending.gov website as well as the stimulus-tracking website Recovery.gov, and consolidates data from all federal spending including grants, contracts, loans and expenses of federal agencies. The legislation also establishes consistent standards for reporting this spending data by agencies and recipients in a standard format.
“Standardizing the way this information is reported, and then centralizing the way it’s publicly disclosed, will make it a lot easier to identify needless duplication and inefficiency and help us spot and prevent waste and fraud,” Warner said. “This legislation is an example of how Washington is supposed to work. It builds on the work of the Office of Management and Budget and the Recovery Board as well as the work of Chairman Issa in the House. By working together in a bipartisan way, we will create a powerful new tool that further empowers taxpayers and policymakers and changes the way the federal government does business.”
The DATA Act:
Establishes a universal standard of recipient reporting for money received from the federal government directly to an independent database. This has widely been credited as the key to the success of the Recovery Board in catching and preventing fraud, waste, and abuse in stimulus spending.
Collects agency expenditure data and combines it with the recipient reported data. This will allow agencies, Congress, and citizens to discover waste and inefficiency in government and highlight issues that result in improper payments.
Creates a permanent successor to the Recovery Board, to be designated as the Federal Accountability and Spending Transparency Board (FAST Board).
Directs the new FAST Board to establish common identifiers and consistent reporting standards for all federally collected data.
Warner, Webb join in effort to ensure retroactive pay for furloughed federal workers
U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) filed legislation today that would ensure that federal workers receive retroactive pay for the duration of a potential government shutdown.
Currently, federal pay is suspended in the event of a funding lapse or government shutdown, and retroactive payment for “non-essential” and “essential” employees must be specifically approved by Congress.
“Federal employees, including up to 90 percent of the civilian workforce at the Pentagon and thousands of other federal employees across Virginia, could be sent home without pay during any government shutdown,” Sen. Warner said. “These employees provide critical support for our ongoing military operations, including humanitarian relief in Japan, and they should not be penalized for Congress’ inability to resolve our political and policy differences with a short-term spending bill.”
“Federal employees who were furloughed through no fault of their own should be paid,” said Sen. Mikulski. “Dedicated civil servants should not be scapegoats for the decisions of politicians. They should be paid retroactively and I believe they should be paid in a timely way. I oppose this Tea Party shutdown. I am for cuts. I have reformed spending. I have initiated cuts. I believe we need a more frugal, efficient federal government. But it can’t be done through serial CRs on the back of federal employees.”
“Marylanders who work for the federal government do not deserve to be locked out of their jobs and lose pay because lawmakers cannot agree on a budget,” said Sen. Cardin. “These are real people with families who are hurting and a shutdown is not of their making. I want to make sure they are not penalized by the inability of Congress to pass a budget.”
“Individuals who dedicate their lives to public service should not have their livelihoods threatened due to Congress’ failure to execute its core function of funding the government,” said Sen. Webb. “For that reason, as a matter of fairness, this legislation will ensure that federal workers are compensated for any wages lost if the government is forced to shut down.”
Jill Hanken: Ryan budget proposal is an outrage
The health and well being of low and middle income Americans is being threatened by the Budget Resolution proposed by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.). It would slash income and opportunity for millions of regular American families while shifting trillions of dollars to the wealthiest individuals and corporations.
Will your elderly relatives need Medicaid for their nursing home or other long term care? The proposal would turn Medicaid into a fixed block grant, forcing states to either pick up more health care costs or cut their programs. Virginia’s Medicaid program serves nearly one million elderly, disabled, children, and pregnant women each year. A full 70% of Virginia’s Medicaid spending is for elderly and disabled people. But our program is already one of the leanest in the country, now ranked 48th in the nation in per capita Medicaid spending. A block grant would make Virginia’s program even more restrictive.
Do you expect to get Medicare when you turn 65? The proposal radically changes Medicare, turning it into a government voucher program for private insurance for seniors who enroll after 2022. This will eliminate current coverage protections and certainly raise out of pocket costs.
Do you know any unemployed workers who needed food stamps to keep their kids fed? The proposal would also convert SNAP/food stamps into a fixed block grant to states, eliminating the program’s ability to respond to economic crises, such as a recession.
Do you want to send your children to college? The proposal would drastically cut Pell Grants for over nine million low and middle-income students. Many simply won’t be able to get a college degree. Other educational programs from pre-school through high school and technical training are also on the chopping block.
This proposal is completely lopsided. Two-thirds of the cuts come from programs that provide essential services to low and middle income populations. At the same time the resolution gives more tax cuts to millionaires, billionaires and big corporations.
Ryan’s budget is not a balanced approach to long term deficit reduction. It is an outrage which should be rejected
Jill Hanken is a staff attorney with the Virginia Poverty Law Center.
Warner, Webb join group urging Boehner to avoid government shutdown
A group of 16 moderate Democratic senators, led by Mark Udall of Colorado, today sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, urging him to prevent a shutdown of the federal government that would hurt our country’s still-fragile economy and distract from the need to work together to address greater, long-term fiscal challenges.
The senators agree that addressing the nation’s debt requires urgent action, and they added their voices to those who are extremely concerned that a minority in the Republican Party are pushing for a government shutdown solely to assert a political point.
In addition to Mark Udall, the letter was signed by Tom Carper (D-Del.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Jim Webb (D-Va.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Bob Casey (D=Pa.), and Chris Coons (D-Del.).
Not only would a shutdown distract Congress from focusing on a comprehensive, bipartisan approach to debt reduction, economists have warned that it would stunt productivity, erode confidence in the U.S. economy and hamper job growth, the senators wrote. At a time when the economy is still recovering, they said, the federal government and Congress “should be single-mindedly focused on supporting economic development and job growth.”
Senate Democrats have shown significant flexibility, agreeing to Republicans’ original proposal to keep the government running through the year while protecting jobs.
“Knowing that a bipartisan deal is within reach to cut tens of billions of dollars from current funding levels, it would be irresponsible to shut down the government and punish our constituents solely to assert a political point,” the senators continued. “We stand ready to resolve this short-term funding debate in a common-sense way and work with you on tackling the even more daunting fiscal challenges our country must confront. The American people expect no less.”
Susan Shaer: Money and values from Congress and the President – hard choices
Are you clued in to the current slashing and burning going on in Washington? The new Congress is trying to settle on a federal budget that should have been voted on last fall. President Obama unveiled his idea for the next budget on Monday. How do you think they are setting priorities? After all, our federal budget shows what we value, doesn’t it? What we care about as a country? So what does our president’s budget care about?
President Obama’s federal budget for our next fiscal year revealed that almost all of Secretary of Defense Gates’ recommended Pentagon “cuts” (really restructuring and a reduction in the rate of increase) will be consumed by increased war spending. The total Pentagon budget planned for 2012-2016 shows virtually no change between this year and last year’s projections.
This year, President Obama does face an incredibly steep challenge –growing deficits and debt. The fall election made it clear that fiscal conservatives, Tea Party candidates, and backers demand deep spending cuts to address this. Despite promises from President Obama that everything would be considered for cuts – this is not true for the Pentagon.
Worse, the new Republican-run Congress proposes that this year’s spending be cut back by $100 billion. To do this, they are proposing draconian cuts to everything except military spending.
Yes, we need a strong defense but also a reasonable one. Horrified hoards responded when they learned we sent troops to Iraq without proper body and vehicle protection. Ironically enough, we are currently spending about one hundred billion a year in Afghanistan – the same amount that Congress is proposing we find by cutting needed domestic programs. Critics still remind Congress that we are not protecting our ports or transportation systems here at home. These are not examples of a reasonable approach to defense.
Recent polls show that most Americans would juggle the budget deficit/debt problem differently than what President Obama proposes. Congress, however, does not ordinarily hear this message. They ignore their constituents. On the subject of the military industrial complex, members of Congress heartily agree with the military contractors instead of those individuals who vote for them. Recent analyses acknowledge that military contractors recognized immediately that when the Cold War was over their gravy train had ended. They needed a new strategy for survival and growth. So they developed one by making parts of weapons systems in every congressional district in the country.
There are prices to be paid at every level for this kind of thinking. Job training, science research, higher education, National Institutes of Health, heating aid for the poor, nutrition programs for children – the list goes on and on. These programs will help us to economic recovery. These programs are where we need to invest in order to have a hope of competing in the coming decades. The President’s plan would freeze many of these programs at last year’s spending levels, while the Pentagon is gobbling up way over half of the overall discretionary budget.
We need to stop mindless unchecked spending on bloated Pentagon programs that feed defense contractors while starving real economic and security needs. Let’s be winners with our American values. Do we choose weapons and war, or do we insist on real security, a growing economy and a healthy environment?
Susan Shaer is executive director of Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND), a national activist organization working to redirect excessive military spending to unmet human and environmental needs.
David Cox: Quiet progress
Lately, the federal deficit has been decreasing its increasing.
With all the hype over burning Korans, building mosques, protesting Tea Partiers, not to mention the triumph of good over evil of the Redskins beating the Cowboys a week ago Sunday, you might have missed that point of some, if small, consolation.
So I’ll repeat: The monthly deficit is growing but at a slower rate. The Treasury Department reported a decrease in August of 12% with what it had been in August, 2009. July’s improvement was just over 8 percent, and in June the decrease was 27.3 percent from the year before. Individual and notably corporate income taxes are heartening. So while the deficit grows, at least it’s not growing at the rate it was.
There’s more news that might have gotten smothered.
Numbers of illegal immigrants in the United States decreased by a million or more by 2009, according to many reports, from 12 million to 11.1—and well below the 13 million that Congressman Goodlatte quoted on this page last week. In Virginia, the Washington Post reported, the numbers went down by 65,000 to 240,000 between 2008 and 2009.
After a terrible summer, the stock market has lately resumed its slow upward climb.
Many of those bailed-out companies have been repaying what the government provided, with interest. In retrospect, the move that started under President Bush was an investment that not only propped up (if not saved) the economy but also gave a good return to taxpayers. Turning a profit might not be the government’s job, but in this case, it sure beats the alternative.
Just before Labor Day, President Obama assembled leaders of the Middle East, notably of Israel and Palestine, for talks on bringing peace there. The talks were civil, productive, and may actually lead somewhere; and they have continued. This is huge, for reducing tensions and increasing stability would give less for radicals to protest and more for moderates to advance.
Let’s not forget that combat troops withdrew from Iraq (you probably heard that) and Iraq hasn’t yet collapsed. Though far from resolved, let’s recognize another step forward.
Many of the fears of a year or two ago have vanished. Remember how the new President was going to take away guns? Or that he would ban bullets, such that there was a run to stores to stockpile them? Didn’t happen.
Of course far too many Americans lack good jobs. Illegal immigrants number about a third more than a decade ago. Craziness still upsets relations between Israel and Palestine. War continues in Afghanistan. A monthly deficit adds to too-high levels. Our world is not nearly as perfect as we wish it were.
But the sky is not falling, either. Those who claim it is, notably for partisan gain, may be rushing around conveying their fears that they don’t look up to see if, just maybe, the sky is doing OK. Or maybe they don’t want to. Especially if they’ve based their lives or their political careers on breeding fear.
For all our troubles, the sky isn’t falling. The monthly deficit is. Those are both worth noting.
Column by David Cox. This column originally appeared in the Sept. 22 issue of The Rockbridge Weekly.
Riane Eisler and Kimberly Otis: The debt, women and our future
Posted by afp on July 6, 2011 · Leave a Comment
But such accomplishments do not begin to go far enough. For one thing, by authorizing major cuts to traditionally women’s jobs in education, health care, and family planning, the President allowed an assault on women’s economic status and health-care access. Moreover, he allowed opponents to divert the conversation about economic recovery from the millions of unemployed and the massive increase in Americans in poverty to an obsessive focus on reducing the deficit through government program cuts. And because women comprise the vast majority of public-sector teachers, nurses, social workers, caregivers, and others being laid off, women are now bearing the brunt of job losses.
These shortsighted and cruel cuts are not only harming millions of people and their families; they will soon harm us all. With health, education, and poverty alleviation programs being scrapped, our nation is undermining the most important asset for our economic future: the “high-quality human capital” economists tell us is essential for success in our post-industrial knowledge/service economy. Yet instead of educating the public about this, the Administration has itself started to talk about job creation exclusively in the private sector – with no mention of the havoc being created by gutting employment in the public sector, or of its dire future consequences.
Instead, the Administration joined “the sky is falling” talk about the deficit, failing to point out that our federal debt (roughly equal to our annual GDP or about $14 trillion, a ratio of 1-to-1 according to the most alarmist calculations) is actually far lower than our debt to GDP ratio during World War II. It is also far lower than that of many other countries. Japan had a 2.25-to-1 debt to GDP even before the massive earthquake and tsunami disaster. Certainly we have to watch our national debt, especially because so much of it is owed to foreign nations. But it must not be used as the rationale for cutting essential services or for a wholesale firing of public employees, much less as an excuse for demonizing unions, without which we would not have had a middle class.
As television and radio host Larry King stated recently, “The average guy isn’t sitting today in a diner going ‘Oh, the deficit.’” Instead we’re supposed to genuflect to the “wisdom” of the old boys clubs on Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce about the importance of addressing the deficit through spending cuts alone to jobs which provide needed human capital. Continued focus on cutting teachers, health care workers, and other traditionally female jobs will not address the stalling of the economy, but instead will mean a lot more pain and no gains for a lot more people both in the short and long term.
We’ve got to also debunk clichés about a typical American family sitting around the dinner table being better at understanding how to balance a budget than officials in Washington. In reality, most Americans’ mortgages average about $172,000 – more than four times the $40,000 average annual salary. College students also amass heavy debts with student loans, but few would encourage young people to forgo the enormous future value of a higher education. Moreover, businesses routinely take on substantial debt in order to invest in future research and development that produces a high return. As Sally Kohn reported in her USA Today op-ed, “IBM borrows twice as much money as it earns annually. Boeing borrows four times more than it earns. JP Morgan Chase… borrows 50 times more than it earns … If the U.S. were borrowing anywhere near as much as Chase bank, we’d have legitimate reason to worry. But in general, borrowing money is necessary to invest in the future — whether the future of a business or the future of a nation.”
With the recent announcement of an opening for a new Chair of the President’s Council on Economic Advisors, there is an opportunity for the Administration to re-direct the conversation to what has been ignored at our peril: the urgent need for investing in our nation’s human infrastructure. And choosing a woman who understands these vital matters could go a long way to applying the fundamentals of economics in a more balanced way. We need the voices of women to talk about what really counts: increasing the real wealth of our nation by investing in its human beings.
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