Dem faults GOP estimates on federal waste, fraud and abuse

House Budget Committee Republicans appear to have missed the mark in their attempts to identify fraud, waste and abuse in the federal budget, House Budget ranking member John Spratt, D-S.C., said Thursday.

House Budget Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, earlier Thursday held a news conference to announce the estimated savings identified by various House committees, as instructed by the fiscal 2004 budget resolution, at between $80 billion and $100 billion over the next 10 years.

But Spratt said that a preliminary review by Democrats of the end result showed that "the approach put forward in the budget resolution was flawed. Simply put, the submissions do not appear to have achieved the stated goal, that of identifying legislative changes that would produce $132 billion in savings from the mandatory budget."

Spratt noted that three of the 15 committees have not submitted their reports and that those that did "confirm that identifying waste, fraud and abuse is easier than proposing legislation to eliminate it."

Several of the committees only identified possible waste and fraud, but not specific legislation to address them, as required by the budget resolution, Spratt said.

Moreover, Spratt contended that some committees' recommendations would put critical public services at risk in the rush to eliminate waste.

"For example, the Education and the Workforce Committee recommends achieving budgetary savings by repealing or limiting two laws-the Davis-Bacon Act and the Service Contract Act-that protect the wages of America's workers," he said. "These submissions add to our concern that legislative remedies to waste, fraud, and abuse are unlikely to yield $132 billion in mandatory savings, and that reducing mandatory spending in next year's budget resolution by that amount would risk services that are essential to the American people."

Nussle conceded that the committees fell short of their $132 billion target and "could have dug a little deeper."

However, he said that "the $85 billion to $100 billion of waste identified by the committee reports does not even include some of the most costly occurrences of waste in our government."

Nussle indicated that the two-month period in June and July during which committees had to examine their excesses, coupled with the pending August recess, left the estimates short of what he predicted.

"We've barely even scratched the surface in the mandatory programs of what's out there," he said. "We clearly have a lot more work to do."

Nussle said the House Budget Committee will address the abuses highlighted in the committee reports in the fiscal 2005 budget resolution.