奥巴马每日发言On Reducing Spending in The Budget(2009-5-7)

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REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
ON REDUCING SPENDING IN THE BUDGET
 

Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building
Room 350

10:42 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Good morning, everybody.  All across this country, Americans are responding to difficult economic times by tightening 1 their belts and making tough decisions about where they need to spend and where they need to save.  The question the American people are asking is whether Washington is prepared to act with the same sense of responsibility.

I believe we can and must do exactly that.  Over the course of our first hundred days in office, my administration has taken aggressive action to confront a historic economic crisis.  We're doing everything that we can to create jobs and to get our economy moving while building a new foundation for lasting 2 prosperity -- a foundation that invests in quality education, lowers health care costs, and develops new sources of energy powered by new jobs and industries.

But one of the pillars of this foundation is fiscal 3 responsibility.  We can no longer afford to spend as if deficits 5 don't matter and waste is not our problem.  We can no longer afford to leave the hard choices for the next budget, the next administration -- or the next generation.

That's why I've charged the Office of Management and Budget, led by Peter Orszag and Rob Nabors who are standing 6 behind me today, with going through the budget -- program by program, item by item, line by line -- looking for areas where we can save taxpayer 7 dollars.

Today, the budget office is releasing the first report in this process:  a list of more than 100 programs slated 8 to be reduced or eliminated altogether.  And the process is ongoing 9.

I want to be clear:  There are many, many people doing valuable work for our government across the country and around the world.  And it's important that we support these folks -- people who don't draw a big paycheck or earn a lot of praise but who do tough, thankless jobs on our behalf in our government.  So this is not a criticism of them.

At the same time, we have to admit that there is a lot of money that's being spent inefficiently 10, ineffectively, and, in some cases, in ways that are actually pretty stunning 12.

Some programs may have made sense in the past -- but are no longer needed in the present.  Other programs never made any sense; the end result of a special interest's successful lobbying campaign.  Still other programs perform functions that can be conducted more efficiently 11, or are already carried out more effectively elsewhere in the government.

One example of a program we will cut is a long-range radio navigation system which costs taxpayers 13 $35 million a year.  This system once made a lot of sense, before there were satellites to help us navigate 14.  Now there's GPS.  And yet, year after year, this obsolete 15 technology has continued to be funded even though it serves no government function and very few people are left who still actually use it.

Another example is the National Institute for Literacy.  Now, I strongly support initiatives that promote literacy -- it's critical -- but I oppose programs that do it badly.  Last year, nearly half of the funding in this program was spent on overhead.  So we've proposed cutting the $6 million for this program in favor of supporting literacy efforts within the Department of Education which use tax dollars more effectively and wisely.

We're also closing an office maintained by the Department of Education in Paris.  This is an office that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to employ one person as a representative to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO.  Now, participation 16 in UNESCO is very important, but we can save this money and still participate using e-mail and teleconferencing and a small travel budget.

In addition, we're going to save money by eliminating unnecessary defense 17 programs that do nothing to keep us safe, but rather prevent us from spending money on what does keep us safe.  One example is a $465 million program to build an alternate engine for the Joint 18 Strike Fighter.  The Defense Department is already pleased with the engine it has.  The engine it has works.  The Pentagon does not want and does not plan to use the alternative version.  That's why the Pentagon stopped requesting this funding two years ago.  Yet it's still being funded.