Posted by Tina
Smart management of the people’s money is sorely needed in Washington and thanks to Elaine Chao, a roadmap to budgetary responsibility is available to anyone who cares to follow her lead! Ms Chao worked tirelessly over eight years to reduce spending and manage her department more efficiently. The The Washington Examiner has details:
Under eight years of leadership by Secretary Elaine L. Chao, the Department of Labor actually cut discretionary spending. And it wasn’t simply a cut in anticipated spending that still leaves actual spending higher than before. The absolute level of spending fell. Discretionary budget authority fell from $12 billion in fiscal year 2001 to $11.8 billion in 2008.
Did you catch the distinction?
See, most of the time when DC spending critters talk about spending cuts they are talking about reducing the size of an increase in spending. That’s right, so-called agreements to make “budget cuts” are really just agreements not to spend quite so lavishly. So, if the president’s budget proposal calls for a department increase, from $8 billion to $12 billion, and the congress settles on $10 billion, they consider that a “cut”.
Neat trick, huh?
But Former Secretary Chao was a different critter all together! She actually walked the talk and managed her department so that after eight years her department was spending less than the budget allowed when she took over the job. Under her management she also “collected $1.4 billion in back wages for more than 2 million workers, and obtained more than 900 convictions of corrupt union officials while receiving eight consecutive clean audits.” That’s an impressive record!
The American people know the Washington bureaucracy is costing us a lot of money. We can’t afford it right now but even if we had a roaring economy government departments have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers to run their departments efficiently.
Will current department heads choose to emulate Ms Chao and manage their departments as successfully as she did? Only if we demand their performance matches or exceeds that of former Secretary Chao.
Kudos to Elaine Chao for going completely against the grain.
Anyone who has ever worked for any state or federal bureaucracy knows full well how this year’s budget is spent just to be able to ask for more in next year’s budget.
I saw that countless times. Whenever there is a year end surplus the word goes out — spend now. Spend on anything from drill bits to computer equipment to office tables to printer paper. No matter if you do not need it, no matter if it all goes into storage and may never get used, spend it now.
Out of college, money spent
See no future, pay no rent
All the money’s gone, nowhere to go