Saturday, December 7, 2024

Joni Ernst's 22 ways to save $2 Trillion

 Joni Ernst, of course, is a Senator from Iowa, and she is working with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy of DOGE to make government more efficient.

Her 22 steps are here: https://x.com/SenJoniErnst/status/1861173088374718885

The first 5 are:

1. Ghost Workers.  The government can save $15.7 billion per year by not leasing office space where nobody works.

2. Audit the IRS. Hundreds of IRS agents are delinquent on their tax, and over 150,000 government workers owe back taxes totalling over $1.5 billion.  (Can't they just take the taxes from their paychecks?)

3. Undo Boondoggles.  Including $7.5 billion to build EV charging stations (which built 17) and $42 billion to expand rural broadband (which connected nobody).

4. Cancel the California trains. This will save $144 billion.

5.  Stop Christmas in September.  Government agencies rush to spend money on anything in September to justify their budgets.  This will save $53 billion.

And the most interesting one to me:

8. Trillion Dollar Secret Slush Funds. There are over $1.6 trillion in unobligated funds. It is not clear, but apparently the money has already been disbursed by Treasury and is sitting in (off-shore?) bank accounts waiting to be spent.  I would like to know more about this.

Update:  Here is a document listing the unobligated funds.  https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/balances_fy2024.pdf

The Department of HUD by itself has $190 billion in unobligated funds.  (How about abolishing HUD?).  International Assistance Programs have $233 billion.  

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