Cuts, Consolidations, and Savings
As part of the President’s Management Agenda, the Administration will continue to build upon successful efforts to maximize the value of every taxpayer dollar by enhancing productivity and efficiency and achieving cost savings across the Government.
Consistent with the Management Agenda, the Budget continues efforts such as reducing administrative overhead, increasing the use of shared services, increasing strategic sourcing and category management, cutting improper payments, saving on real estate costs, reforming military acquisition, and consolidating data centers.
The Budget also continues efforts to reorganize and consolidate Federal programs to reduce duplication and improve efficiency. The President is renewing his request for the Congress to revive the reorganization authority given to nearly every President from Herbert Hoover to Ronald Reagan. In effect, the President is asking to have the same authority that any business owner has to reorganize or streamline operations to meet changing circumstances and customer demand. The Budget outlines a set of ambitious cross-Government consolidations intended to serve as a blueprint for reorganizing and reforming Government, including consolidating the six primary business and trade agencies into a single agency responsible for fostering economic growth; combining the two largest food-safety related agencies into a single agency responsible for inspections, enforcement, and outbreak prevention; and continuing efforts to streamline science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs across Government.
Further detail on all of these initiatives is provided in the chapter titled “A Government of the Future.”
The Budget also continues to target unnecessary or lower priority programs for reduction or elimination. In the President’s first six Budgets, the Administration identified, on average, more than 150 cuts, consolidations, and savings averaging more than $23 billion each year. Many of these proposals have now been implemented, and the Budget builds on this success by including 101 cuts, consolidations, and savings proposals projected to save over $14 billion in 2016. While the Budget proposes increases in discretionary budget caps to make room for a range of domestic and security investments, it still includes discretionary cuts, consolidations, and savings proposals totaling $3.6 billion to further make room for investments to help move the Nation forward. Savings from mandatory and program integrity proposals total $10.6 billion in 2016 and $609 billion over 10 years; about 70 percent of these savings are from health reform proposals. The Budget shows that we can avoid the harmful spending cuts known as sequestration, and instead invest in economic growth, mobility, and national security, while still putting the Nation on a sustainable fiscal path. Overall the Budget achieves about $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction, primarily from reforms in health programs, the tax code, and immigration.
Discretionary and mandatory cuts, consolidations, and savings proposals in this year’s Budget are detailed on the following tables. Savings from the Administration’s program integrity proposals, totaling $110 billion through 2025, are detailed in the Budget Process chapter of the Analytical Perspectives volume.
