Creative Ways To Track and Cut Government Spending

Government spending feels like it simply cannot be stopped. No matter which party is in the White House, spending just increases. Republicans call for spending cuts to things they don’t like and Democrats call for spending cuts to things they don’t like, while both of them miraculously end up increasing the deficit. Government spending is now rightly being recognized as the threat to our nation that it is, but no one seems to have the willpower or ideas needed to significantly diminish it. The root problem with government spending is irresponsibility in using the hard earned resources of the people. Although spending less than the government brings in isn’t comfortable, it’s often simple. This article will explore a few different methods which the state could implement to cut spending if they really cared about it. Sadly, this article will get lost in the vault of Internet content, and only be accessible via the way back machine, even as the US continues to spiral into debt, not heeding any of these suggestions or taking any meaningful action to cut spending.

U.S. federal, state, and local government abound with stories of financial opacity that would be illegal in almost any other sector. The governor of California has repeatedly vetoed legislation to see where money intended to be spent on homelessness has gone. A lack of transparency about money intended to help those in situations of dire need should raise some eyebrows. The first step to cutting spending is radical transparency in where government money is spent. Businesses often detail how they spent their money just to show the shareholders that they were good stewards of their equity. A government should be far more transparent than that, as the money truly is the people’s. In the past, an argument could be made that the time and energy spent tracking spending would be counterproductive as time and money spent tracking waste would increase overall spend. All levels of government repeatedly fail audits, and face no consequences. While the amount of paperwork complexity involved in the past made successfully completing audits cost intensive, AI and modern data infrastructure could create a federal back office that can cleanly keep track of the majority of its financial data. 

The second method for decreasing spending is to work backwards from the overall allowable spending to specific items rather than the other way around. The constraints of debt and relatively fixed expenses should set the amount of money we are allowed to spend on other things. A financial plan based on both paying off and servicing the debt should be in place before we get to the level of deciding on which congressional districts would benefit most from the budget. Failing to recognize the constrained state of the budget is to deny reality and make our financial situation even worse. Even if actual spending goes above plan, creating a plan that is built to run with current financial realities rather than denying their existence gives a far better chance of lowered spending than the alternative. Spending must first be bounded before any real progress can be made to diminish it. The public acceptance of deficit spending makes it difficult to see how we will ever get back on track.

The final method provides a means to solve a small part of the incentive problem. Revenue owners within the government could be assigned to certain units within the government. Their overall compensation could be tied to how much under their allotted budget they spent while hitting key performance indicators. This would work best for units with clearly defined outcomes and where the revenue lead had no ability to help set the budget. If the budget was set by an external force, and the success of their unit could be clearly quantified, then their ability to complete their work while spending less money than was expected could be rewarded. While some extra tax money would be going to the salaries of these revenue heads, far more of that money would be going towards the debt. If the people who had the ability to cut costs were given some incentive to do so, they’re complacency about costs would be less likely. Particularly if they were penalized for going over budget, even just a little bit, their outcomes would be far better than our current system of bloat with no feedback. Before we can focus on the national debt, we must find creative solutions to reduce the deficit that keeps putting us into a deeper hole.