Obama's $100 Million Question

But rather than simply playing gotcha politics, Republicans should remember that their party’s former congressional standard-bearer, Tom DeLay, proclaimed victory in the war against government waste in 2005, saying that there was very little fat left to cut from the federal budget: “after 11 years of Republican majority, we’ve pared it down pretty good.”

In fact, the Bush administration’s own running tally of government (in)efficiency—the OMB’s Program Assessment Rating Tool—found that of the 977 programs monitored, 25 performing were graded as “Not Performing,” while an additional 28 performing were deemed as merely “Adequate.” All remained funded by the Republican Congress.

Moreover, a 2005 report by Heritage Foundation economist Brian Riedl found that there were 342 economic development programs, 130 programs serving at-risk youth, 72 clean-water programs, and 27 teen-pregnancy programs. Redundancies were rampant while non-defense discretionary spending jumped 8.2 percent during President Bush’s first three years in office, exceeding even Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Not too many conservatives were screaming about “socialism” then—partisan loyalty trumped principle.

The bottom line is that there is always plenty of waste, fraud, and abuse to cut from the federal government—it is and should be a constant effort, especially against the tsunami of federal TARP and stimulus spending, where new scandals will inevitably emerge. There will be new opportunities as well—40 percent of nonessential government employees are scheduled to retire in the next 10 years, many of whom can be replaced with e-government technology, while improving the delivery of services.

The political skirmish over the drop-in-the-bucket of $100 million is just a preamble to a much bigger deficit-reduction fight to come—President Obama’s stated desire to pull a Nixon-in-China and reform entitlement spending. So this is just a pop-quiz compared to that final exam on the financial-responsibility front. Passing that test will require the Obama administration work with centrist Democrats as well as Republicans to rein in the long-term deficit and restore a sense of generational responsibility to our politics.

The moderate majority of Americans don’t care about the competing ideologies of liberal stimulus spending or conservative trickle-down economics—they want our immediate problems solved, followed by a return to policies of financial responsibility that both parties have abandoned. A recent USA Today poll found that 85 percent of Americans were comfortable with an expanded government role to deal with the financial crisis, but by a margin of 3 to 1 they want to see government cut back when the crisis recedes. This is not a blank check for the Obama administration or liberal House Democrats.

The real test for President Obama will be to match the rhetoric of financial responsibility with the hard work of achieving a long-term track record on that front. Sincere allies of that effort will need to encourage follow-through, building new coalitions across the political aisle while remembering not to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Cutting $100 million is just a small symbolic first step in the right direction.

John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics. Avlon was director of speechwriting and deputy director of policy for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. Previously, he was a columnist for the New York Sun and served as chief speechwriter for then-Mayor Giuliani.