Elusive Wealth

I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the 2010 Budget cuts proposed by the Barack Obama’s Executive Administration.  Maybe I am alone on this    But I wanted to highlight some of the terminated programs to see what kind of waste we are dealing with (or hopefully no longer dealing with).  So this is by no means an exhaustive list. You can see the proposed cuts on the White House website (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/trs.pdf).  This is meant to be a little fun, so please laugh occasionally as you read this.

Advanced Earned Income Tax Credit

The Advanced Earned Income Tax Credit is an extension of the Earned Income Tax Credit that apparently allows people with children eligible for the EITC to receive a portion of the credit through their paychecks (reduced witholding) instead of at filing time. The AEITC is used by a relatively small percentage of people (3% of those eligible for EITC) and is error prone. Cutting this program is estimated to save $125 million.

What I learned from this, is that if 514,000 people used this program, then that means there are about 17 million people claiming the Earned Income Credit.

C-17 Strategic Airlift Aircraft

Well this saves about $91 million.  Supposedly we are dropping this because we have enough of these already.  But I don’t have one, do you?

Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation

Yes I think the word is out, the Earth is round and the East Indies turned out to be farther than he thought. Here we save $1 million, but it makes me wonder what Chris C. would think about cutting the program.

Combat Search and Rescue Helicopter (CSAR-X)

Here we save $144 million dollars by eliminating this single purpose helicopter. From the budget: “The Department of Defense is questioning the need for a single-purpose helicopter. Unlike the other services, which carry out this mission with multiple-purpose helicopters, the Air Force has traditionally carried out this mission with single-purpose aircraft.”

Well they call it single purpose, but it searches and it rescues.  Seems like a winner to me!

Cotton Storage Payments

Cotton storage payments appear to amount to planned price fixing by the U.S. Government. They would never do that, would they?  This item allowed credits for storing cotton until prices increased.  The program is being eliminated since storage costs for other commodities are not funded by the Government.  I could see going either way on this, either have the U.S Government pay to store nothing… or, why not have them store everything?

Storing cotton costs around $570 million, so maybe that is why we don’t extend this program to polyester storage, etc.

Inner City Bus Security Program

Costing us $12 million, this program is being eliminated because it does not appropriately factor in risk when determining where the funding goes. If we wanted to factor in risk, I would start by looking for buses that Keanu Reeves is on.

Joint Strike Fighter Alternative Engine

I love this one!  At the tune of $465 million, we had two separate contractors building two different designs of an engine for the same airplane! Perhaps instead of cancelling the program, we could use the losing engine in one of our new GM cars.

Loran-C

This is being replaced because it is a legacy technology that GPS handles better. Loran-C acted somewhat as a backup for GPS, at least according to the budget document (you never know if the scope of the cut is as accurate as the Government believes). But what struck me in the document was the following statement, “Accounting for inflation, this will achieve a savings of $36 million in 2010 and $190 million over five years.”  I just find this funny, that the savings included account for inflation, considering the source of the inflation is primarily the government anyway. Maybe we should just increase inflation to meet our budget targets.

Oil and Gas Company Subsidies

This is one we all heard about during the campaign (if we were listening anyway).  This won’t save us anything in 2010, but the proposal states that we still save $26 billion between 2011 and 2019. Despite the belief of the budget document, it is difficult for me to imagine that this would not impact the price of gasoline. But I will take their word on it, they wouldn’t lie.

Oil and Gas Research and Development Program

Presidential Helicopter

This program subsidizes R&D efforts for improving extraction and delivery of oil and gas products. The budget states that oil and gas companies have the means to fund this work on their own.  I agree with this, they should compete on a level playing field with alternative energy source companies.  So far, from a product cost perspective, they have been winning hands down. This saves the taxpayers $250 million.

Presidential Helicopter

Last, but not least, the Presidential Helicopter! The cost of this beast has grown to $13 billion. This is an entire helicopter program for a single person.  The program is 5 years over schedule. The good news is that the budget has been cut to just enough funds to end the program and evaluate options for the current fleet and an alternative program. The bad news?  The alternative program likely starts the whole process over again.  Maybe we should have another bake off — hire two contractors to deliver two Presidential Helicopters and see which one flies better.

Conclusion

Well this was a short look at some of the terminated programs from the 2010 proposed budget. Hopefully your favorite program did not get cut. If it did, I apologize if I made fun of it in any away.