Office of Management and Budget Blog

Earlier this week, I announced that I will be stepping down as OMB Director. It has been a great honor to serve in President Obama’s Cabinet, and the decision to step down was not an easy one.

Over the past few weeks (and since taking office 16 months ago), we have focused on cutting waste, boosting efficiency, and creating a government more open and responsive to the American people.

Summer is a great opportunity for communities to address two of the challenges facing kids nationwide when school lets out: unhealthy eating habits and the summer reading gap. That’s why First Lady Michelle Obama has launched the Administration-wide Let’s Read. Let’s Move. initiative to combat childhood obesity and summer reading loss by encouraging youth to read and participate in physical activity, as well as providing access to healthy food. As part of that initiative, I joined a group of students today in upper Manhattan who are leading the charge against childhood obesity. They are the Mighty Milers of PS 128 and they have collectively run over 42,000 miles this year!

Last week, I spoke about the President’s commitment to create a government that is efficient, effective, transparent, and responsive. Since then, the Administration has unveiled some of the steps we are taking toward this goal: from identifying the bottom 5 percent of government programs to disposing of excess buildings and real estate and the Agriculture Department’s re-negotiating of its contract with crop insurance companies (which will reduce deficits by $4 billion over ten years).

In a blog posting, Tom Shoop raised a question about a sentence in my speech yesterday that, "at one time, a federal worker went to the office and had access to cutting-edge computer power and programs. Now, he often has more of both clipped to a device on his belt." Tom noted that as impressive as it is, he wasn’t sure that his Android-based Smartphone has anywhere near the computing power of even an eight- or ten-year-old PC.

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf recently gave a presentation on health costs and the fiscal outlook. Doug concludes that the federal budget remains on an unsustainable course even after enactment of the Affordable Care Act, and I wholly agree with him.

Today, the President sent to Congress the Reduce Unnecessary Spending Act of 2010 to establish a new, expedited tool to reduce unnecessary or wasteful spending. Under this new expedited procedure, the President would submit a package of rescissions shortly after a spending bill is passed. Congress is then required to consider these recommendations as a package, without amendment, and with a guaranteed up-or-down vote within a specified timeframe.

A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) letter released yesterday has sparked a new round of old questions about the cost of the recently enacted health insurance reform law, the Affordable Care Act. The letter simply updates CBO’s calculation of the size of discretionary authorizations included in the legislation.

Today, the House passed the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (IPERA), legislation that will help rein in improper payments and save taxpayer dollars. As I’ve written about before, "improper payment" is an umbrella term that covers a number of financial transactions — overpayments to individuals or firms is one example; benefit payments to ineligible program participants is another. That is to say, an improper payment occurs when the federal government pays the wrong amount, the wrong person, or at the wrong time. In 2009, taxpayers lost $98 billion in wasteful improper payments by the federal government to individuals, organizations, and contractors — with $54 billion of that amount stemming from Medicare and Medicaid. These errors and mistakes are unacceptable — and the passage of the IPERA bill is an important step forward in curbing these wasteful payments.

Today, the President signed a memorandum outlining steps that will expand opportunities for small businesses to conduct business with the federal government. Small businesses are an important engine of job growth throughout the economy. That is why to boost economic growth and foster job creation, the Administration has undertaken already a number of initiatives – including through the Recovery Act – to boost small business lending and hiring.

My blog post this morning prompted some questions from people who are comparing the Administration’s 2010 earmarks count with data released last month by the group Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS). TCS does good work and is a respected outside voice. In this earmarks’ count, however, its analysis is a bit off.

When the President came into office, he underscored his commitment to changing the old ways of Washington by directing federal agencies to open government to the American people. In our first year in office, we have taken transformative steps that will permanently break down the barriers between the government and the citizens it serves.

Today, DHS announced that it is changing the default setting for its payroll statements from paper to electronic. This means employees will receive their regular payroll data electronically instead of getting stacks of paper earnings statements by mail. By making e-statements the default option, while giving employees the option to opt out in favor of the paper statement, we hope to increase the percentage of federal employees who use this approach while saving the taxpayers’ money.

As regular readers of this blog know, I am an avid believer in the power of data. Evidence-based decisions drive a lot of what we do at OMB, from budget decisions to regulatory review.