2010 Unemployment Extensions - Senator Tom Coburn's Suggestions for Offsets

As all of you by now are probably aware, the Republicans have been voting against the "Extenders" bills which contain unemployment benefits extensions that many of us so very desperately need. The Democrats and the mainstream media have been continually demonizing them over this, accusing them of being heartless and uncaring. But the Republicans have stood firm and have maintained that they are in favor of extending our benefits, they simply want the government to take responsible action and "offset" or pay for these measures to avoid further damage to the country and the economy.

In this process, the Republicans have offered bills and amendments of their own which DO pay for our unemployment benefits extensions without adding to the debt or adding burdensome and job-killing taxes to the private sector. Every time, the Democrats have turned them down. I provided great detail of what was called the "Thune Amendment" several days ago, which you can take a look at here.

Here I would like to provide you with the transcript of debate on the Senate floor on June 17, when Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) spoke in support of the Thune Amendment and delineated ideas for cutting government waste, tightening the federal government and Congress' belt some and using unspent "stimulus" funds to offset unemployment benefits extensions and other costs from the bill that was currently being discussed.

Following is a reprint of Senator Coburn's floor page as copied from his webpage.

See what YOU think ...

"Jun 17 2010Today, Dr. Coburn Offerered Amendment #4331 to the Tax Extenders Bill

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, this is an amendment that will actually pay for everything we are doing. It does several things that the American people are demanding that we do.

It discloses the true cost of borrowing and spending that we actually do in this body.

It reduces the budgets of the Members of Congress. We had a 4.8-percent increase in our budgets. This is going to decrease that by less than a third, making us suffer with the rest of the country in terms of trying to get control of our massive debt and deficit spending.

It enacts what President Obama has been asking his own agencies to do: it takes 5 percent from all the agencies, except Defense and Veterans Affairs, and says: Cut that amount. The size of the agencies has doubled since 1999. We are asking the agencies to find 5 percent of efficiency within their agency to help us not continue to add trillions of dollars of debt to our children.

It eliminates nonessential government travel. It will save us $10 billion over 10 years. It doesn't eliminate essential; it just says that when you can do a teleconference, you do that. You don't necessarily fly and take a hotel room when you can accomplish it another way.

It reduces unnecessary printing and publishing costs of government documents. That saves us $4 billion over 10 years. Nobody reads these. They are all available online. If we get rid of the ones that don't have to be printed, we save hundreds of thousands of trees every year--which absorb CO

2, by the way--but it also saves us $4.4 billion by not printing stuff we all have on our computers already.

In working with the OMB, they are behind what we are trying to do in terms of unused and unneeded government property and government buildings. So what it does is it gives us $15 billion in direct savings in revenue by getting rid of things that we are spending $8 billion a year on maintaining that we are not using. So we save $15 billion over 10 years, plus we get the savings of not having to maintain what we own but are not using.

We will sell unused and unneeded equipment. We have $ 1/4 billion worth just sitting there in warehouses. We are never going to use it, but it is sitting there. We can get good prices from the private sector that can go out and utilize this and put it to work.

It caps the total number of Federal employees. Why is that important? I am a supporter of our Federal employees. We had a speech on the floor today accusing those of us who want to limit the growth of the Federal Government in terms of employees and the size, saying we were against our Federal employees. We are not. What we are saying is that in a time when we are running a $1.6 trillion deficit--that is what it will be this year; we said 1.4, but we have already borrowed $200 billion more than that on this floor since February 12--we ought to be getting more productivity out of what we have, not because it is not the right thing to do--it is the right thing--but because we cannot afford to be lax in anything we are doing today. Every time we don't save a dollar, we are now charging that dollar to our children and grandchildren.

It puts a cap on the total number of Federal employees. There is plenty of flexibility within the Federal Government. The Federal Government has added 160,000 employees in the last 16 months. There are 441,000 for the census, but that doesn't count them. This is 160,000 full-time Federal employees in the last 16 months. How many more employees do we need? Can we afford more Federal employees at this time or should we get more with what we have?

We also put a temporary 1-year freeze on total salary. That doesn't mean people who work for the Federal Government cannot get a raise. They can. But they need to be more productive and recognized for it. But there should be no more automatic pay increases this next year because we are running a $1.6 trillion deficit and also because the average Federal employee makes $78,000 a year and has benefits worth $40,000. The average private sector employee makes $42,000 a year and has benefits worth $20,000. Freezing that for 1 year will have a minimal long-term effect, especially when we saw today that we are actually in a deflationary period where the Consumer Price Index went down one-tenth of 1 percent. We had a nine-tenths of 1 percent decrease this year. So the cost of living is not going up; it is going down. All we are saying is, let's do this for 1 year and demonstrate that we understand the tough choices the public is making and that we are willing to make tough choices.

I agree, it is a tough choice. It is hard. But it does not mean that stellar employees cannot get raises. They can. That saves $2.6 billion this year, for 1 year.

It collects unpaid taxes from employees of the Federal Government. We have employees of the Federal Government who owe $3 billion. It directs a garnishee of those payments from the Federal employees. These are not disputed. These are not still under negotiation. These are things that have already been agreed to that are owed by Federal employees to the Federal Government. That gets us $3 billion that we do not have.

We also have a section that excessive duplication and overhead within the Federal Government should be eliminated. Two easy examples: Across 60 different agencies, we have 70 different programs to feed people who are hungry. Why do we have 70? Why don't we have 7 or one? Not one of those 70 programs has a metric on it to see if it is effective in what it does.

We have 105 programs across seven different agencies that incentivize at the cost of billions of dollars a year people to go into math, science, engineering, and technology. Why do we have 105 programs? Why not one run by one set of overhead and one agency and measure the results? There are 640 other examples of duplication just like that in the Federal Government.

What this amendment says is we ought to be about eliminating that duplication. We ought to be able to increase productivity and also increase the results of the very programs for the people we are trying to help.

The other thing we do is we eliminate bonuses for contractors to the Federal Government who are not meeting performance requirements. That is $800 million a year that your government is paying out to people who do work for the Federal Government who do not meet the minimum requirements for their contract, and yet we are paying them $800 million in bonuses as if they were meeting the requirements of their contract. That saves $8 billion over 10 years. None of us would do that with anybody who worked for us. Why do we allow the Federal Government to do that?

This government gives the United Nations 25 percent of its entire budget. But we also give voluntary payments to the United Nations. I just talked with Peter Orszag from OMB, and I am getting that report as we speak. It was due January 1. It is now mid to late June.

What we do is eliminate no more than $1 billion more than what our obligations are in terms of peacekeeping or our dues to the United Nations. There are good reasons to do that. There was, with the last foreign appropriations, a requirement that the United Nations show us where our money is going. That got thrown out in conference. But we do not even know where the $6 billion a year that we give to the United Nations is spent because they will not show us where it is spent. We would never tolerate that from any agency we fund. And yet we don't. We are saying do not give more than a billion more than that to the United Nations. We limit that. That is a $10 billion a year savings.

Here is what we do know about the United Nations. In the peacekeeping money that we give, 45 percent of it is lost to fraud. Think about that. Forty-five percent of the $3 billion that we give to peacekeeping operations is lost to fraud, documented. We found that one out by accident. They did not want us to find that out.

We ought to be good stewards with the money of the American people when it comes to contributing their money to the United Nations.

Returning excessive funds from an unnecessary, unneeded, unrequested, duplicative reserve fund that will never be spent: That is $362 million. It is a one-time savings. It will never be spent. It is sitting there. We ought to take it back.

Rescinding unspent Federal funds: There is $1.7 trillion sitting in accounts right now. Of that, $690 billion has not been obligated for the future expenditure. We are saying move $50 billion of that back into this year and use it to pay for things that are important, such as unemployment insurance, rather than borrow from our children.

Why is that important? If you have three bank accounts and each one had $100 in it and you had to write a $200 check, you would go to the accounts you had and write the check from the two accounts so you could pay the check. This money is rolling out there to the tune of $600 billion every year that is not obligated.

Common sense would say we would be more efficient with our money rather than paying interest on that money. We would use it in a more timely fashion. Everybody does that except the Federal Government. We ought to be doing it as well.

Reducing wasteful costs at the Department of Energy. The Department of Energy is supposed to be setting the example for this country on energy efficiency. They are the worst agency as far as energy costs and efficiency in energy. All we are doing is you follow the rules you have set for everybody else. It saves $13.8 million per year. That is just one agency following the rules they have told every other agency to follow.

Finally, we strike the new taxes that are in this bill because we do not need to pay for them because we can cut spending somewhere else. The last thing we need to be doing, as we have the threat of a double-dip recession, is taking more private capital out of the economy and putting it into government because the multiplier effect of government spending is very low. Private spending multiplier effect is about 1.5. That means for every dollar you spend, you end up generating about $1.5 in economic activity. For every government dollar that is spent, you generate $1.1 in economic activity. The last thing we ought to be doing is raising taxes. I don't care where it is in this economy. It is so precarious that we need private capital being invested to create jobs and opportunities for jobs in this country.

I have listed the vast majority of provisions that are in the bill. I will be back to discuss each one individually.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor."

You can also view Dr. Coburn's speech here.

I don't know about you, but I feel all of this is more than reasonable. In fact, I can't imagine why these are not the FIRST things our legislators do given the state of our economy and the unfathomable level of debt they have now created for us, our children and our children's children.

I am a single mother. I am unemployed. I have lost my benefits. So I desperately want and NEED these unemployment benefits extensions to pass. But I, for one, fully agree with the Republicans that they should be paid for and that our lawmakers should show some fiscal restraint. The Republicans lost their way and started spending like Democrats for quite a long time, it's true. But now here we are and they've finally begun to mend their ways. Time for the Democrats to do the same and stop blaming the Republicans for finally trying to do what they ALL should be doing ALL the time.

Sources:

http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/floorstatements?ContentRecord_id=56dce2f2-b30c-4567-aa82-33d17ea992b0

http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2010/6/floor statement