WASHINGTON- U.S. Senator Susan Collins, Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, today responded to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), identifying federal programs, agencies, offices, and initiatives with duplicative goals and redundant operations.
"GAO’s report on duplicative federal programs is an important blueprint to not only save the taxpayers’ money but also ‘right size’ the federal government," said Senator Collins. "There are programs that should be consolidated, streamlined, or eliminated."
GAO, the government’s watchdog agency looked at 34 federal program areas and found examples of outrageous fragmentation, inefficiency, and lost revenue, including:
• 15 federal agencies are involved in food safety and demonstrate bad coordination and use of funds
• There are 80 economic development programs across the government with little efficiency, effectiveness, or metrics
• Surface transportation has over 100 programs that are unaccountable and yield no documentation of results
• No one is coordinating the myriad agencies or funds spent on biodefense
• 20 different agencies and 56 programs have a hand in financial literacy programs
"More ominous are the national security threats exposed in the report, including uncoordinated and unaccountable biodefense programs, poorly coordinated northern border security, and ineffective and overlapping food safety programs," continued Senator Collins.
"Perhaps the greatest irony of all is the fact that 20 agencies, housing 56 different programs, are all redundantly trying to improve financial literacy of the American people. The American people can teach the government a thing or two about financial literacy: in difficult fiscal times, we should pay for something once, not dozens of times. I look forward to working with my colleagues and the President to investigate these redundancies and get our federal house in order."
To read a full copy of the GAO report, click here.
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