Sen. Carper Welcomes Administration’s New “Campaign to Cut Waste”

WASHINGTON – Today, Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) welcomed the White House’s announcement of a new initiative to increase government transparency and cut unnecessary government spending. Under the leadership of Vice President Biden, the “Campaign to Cut Waste” will track and eliminate misspent tax dollars in every agency and department across the federal government.

The “Campaign to Cut Waste” is modeled on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board and Recovery.gov, which published online exactly how the Recovery Act tax dollars were being used to help put Americans back to work and reinvest in America. The Recovery Act’s transparency programs enjoyed great success by employing cutting-edge tools and technology to curb wasteful spending and prevent fraud.

“The Vice President’s announcement today is a common-sense solution to track and save money in the federal budget,” said Sen. Carper. “It is my hope that we can use the successful Recovery Board model and apply it to all federal government spending. As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, I’ve held several hearings on the Recovery Board’s efforts to prevent waste and fraud and what lessons the Administration can learn from these efforts to make the entire government more transparent and effective when spending taxpayer money.

“The ‘Campaign to Cut Waste’ encompasses important transparency measures and puts us on a path toward a culture of thrift within the federal government. While there is no silver bullet to solve all of our nation’s fiscal woes, this campaign is just one of many silver darts that we can use against the federal debt. Today’s announcement to consolidate duplicative or unnecessary government websites is a small step of many to streamline and improve the way the government operates — something that I’ve encouraged the Administration to do for a long time now. The ‘Campaign to Cut Waste’ shows that we are serious about being absolutely relentless when it comes to achieving better results for less money in the federal government. I look forward to working with the Vice President, Chairman Devaney and my colleagues here in Congress to see what more needs to be done.”

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