President Obama Terminates or Shrinks 121 Ineffective Government Programs

"We're doing everything that we can to create jobs and to get our economy moving while building a new foundation for lasting 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 responsibility. We can no longer afford to spend as if deficits 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 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 dollars."

"In addition, we're going to save money by eliminating unnecessary defense 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 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.

These are just a few examples. But the point to remember is that there are consequences for this kind of spending. It makes the development of new tools for our military, like the Joint Strike Fighter, more expensive -- even prohibitively so -- and crowds out money that we could be using, for example, to improve our troops' quality of life and their safety and security. It makes government less effective. It makes our nation less resilient and less able to address immediate concerns and long-term challenges. And it leaves behind a massive burden for our children and grandchildren."


LORAN-C ($35 million). This long-range, radio-navigation system has been made obsolete by GPS.

· Abandoned Mine Lands Payments ($142 million). This program now pays to clean up mines that have already been cleaned up.

· Educational attaché, Paris, France ($632,000). The Department of Education can use e-mail, video conferencing, and modest travel to replace a full-time representative to UNESCO in Paris, France.

· Los Alamos Neutron Science Center refurbishment ($19 million). The linear accelerator housed here was built 30 years ago and no longer plays a critical role in weapons research.

· Even Start ($66 million). The most recent evaluation found no difference between families in the program and those not in it across 38 of 41 outcomes. Strengthening early childhood education is accomplished through significant investments in proven, more effective programs such as Head Start, Early Head Start, and the Early Learning Challenge Fund.

· Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation ($1 million). Due to high overhead, the Foundation would spend only 20 percent of its 2010 appropriation on the fellowships it awards.

· Advanced Earned Income Tax Credit ($125 million). This program benefits very few taxpayers, and has an extremely high error rate: GAO found that 80 percent of recipients did not meet at least one of its requirements.

· Javits Gifted and Talented Education Program ($7 million). Grants from this program go to only 15 school districts nationwide, and there are no empirical measures to judge their efficacy.

· Public Broadcasting Grants ($5 million). USDA made these grants to support rural public broadcasting stations in their conversions to digital broadcasting. That transition is now almost complete.

· Rail Line Relocation Grants ($25 million). This program, duplicative of a merit-based program, is loaded with earmarks.

President Obama's Budget for the Fiscal Year 2010.



Sources: Whitehouse.gov, MSNBC, Huffington Post, ABC News, USA Today, Political Base, Youtube