CITIZENS AGAINST GOVERNMENT WASTE 03/31/2015

Porker of the Month: EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has named Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy Porker of the Month for her agency’s creepy plan to monitor the hotel shower habits of millions of Americans. The EPA’s $15,000 grant to the University of Tulsa “aims to develop a novel low cost wireless device for monitoring water use from hotel guest room showers.  This device will … wirelessly transmit hotel guest water usage data to a central hotel accounting system.” While the shower grant is certainly not the EPA’s most expensive example of government waste, it is both the most recent and extremely obnoxious.  Administrator McCarthy requested a 6 percent, or $452 million, increase in the EPA’s budget for fiscal year (FY) 2016, perhaps to implement the 27,854 pages of regulations issued by the EPA since the beginning of 2009. “Even ‘Big Brother’ did not watch what people were doing in the shower,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.  For her agency’s unremitting and invasive use of taxpayer dollars to intrude on the personal habits of Americans, EPA Administrator “Big Sister” McCarthy is the March Porker of the Month. Read more about the Porker of the Month. CCAGW Lauds Routine Passage of Budget The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) this month praised the House of Representatives and Senate for following standard procedures in adopting a budget for the first time in many years.  The House approved H. Con. Res. 27 by a vote of 228-199 on March 25.  In a letter to the House, CCAGW observed that, as reported by the Budget Committee, the FY 2016 House budget resolution would cut spending by $5.5 trillion over 10 years and balance the budget by 2025.  In addition, the House Budget Committee report referenced CAGW’s cost-cutting recommendations as a resource for eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.  CCAGW also sent a letter asking senators to support or oppose a total of 55 amendments to the FY 2016 Senate budget resolution, S. Con. Res. 11, which the Senate approved by a vote of 52-46 on March 27. The budget blueprint crafted by the Senate Budget Committee also addressed wasteful spending, including budget process reforms and greater transparency, and balances in 10 years, a clear divergence from President Obama’s budget, which never balances at all. The budget resolutions now move to a House-Senate conference committee, which will craft a compromise. Read more about developments with the FY 2016 federal budget. GAO Report Shows Taxpayers’ Losses Are Rising CAGW reacted with dismay to the rise in improper payments described during Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro’s March 4 testimony before the Senate Budget Committee.  The hearing was called to review GAO’s report on “Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, Duplication, and Improper Payments and Achieve Other Financial Benefits,” which disappointingly notes, “For the first time in recent years, the government-wide improper payment estimate significantly increased – to $124.7 billion in fiscal year 2014, up from $105.8 billion in fiscal year 2013.  This increase of almost $19 billion was primarily due to estimates for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Earned Income Tax Credit.” The Medicare fee-for-service improper payment rate is going up for at least two reasons.  First, GAO faults the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for failing to make good use of the anti-waste tools it has at hand, and second, CMS has suspended the Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program. “CMS’s mismanagement of improper payments is unnecessarily costing taxpayers money.  The RAC program had returned $9.7 billion to the Medicare Trust Fund before it was cut off,” declared CAGW President Tom Schatz.  “It is time for CMS to use every tool it has and fully restore all RAC audits immediately.” Read more about the rise in improper federal payments. CAGW Slams New Net Neutrality Regulations CAGW this month blasted the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) 400-page “Open Internet Order” that fleshes out the FCC decision on February 26 to reclassify the Internet as a public utility under Title II of the 1934 Communications Act, which was written to regulate the monopoly telephone industry as a common carrier.  The FCC issued its controversial decision two months after a directive to do so by President Obama on November 10, 2014.  An initial review of the 400-page order confirmed CAGW’s previously-held judgment that net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem.  The order does not cite a specific harm and rests instead upon perceived future harms if the Internet is not walled in by the FCC.  As FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said in his dissent, the FCC will now have “the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works.  It’s an overreach that will let a Washington bureaucracy, and not the American people, decide the future of the online world.”  Read more about the FCC’s takeover of the Internet.