Issue Position: Government Waste

Issue Position

Government does not exist to serve government, it exists to serve the people. Every government has waste, but the larger the government structure the more the waste. The only way to make significant change in government is to make it smaller and more accountable to the people. Liberals in Washington continue to clamor for more taxes, but why would anyone want to pay more taxes to a government that is already wasting billions of dollars a month.

For the past three years, I have worked as a chairman on the government oversight committee to identify government corruption, waste, duplication and regulatory overreach. I have uncovered waste and duplication across the nation, but I have focused on the solutions to clean up the mess.

I authored the Taxpayer Right to Know Act to force federal programs to identify their real cost, staff structure and the metrics to evaluate each program. Programs that cannot even evaluate their effectiveness, cannot continue.

Every time Congress finds a problem, Congress creates another federal program to fight it. Most of the programs do not work and duplicate another dysfunctional program that already existed. Rather than just complain about it, I got to work. At the start of the 2013 session of Congress, I fought for a change in the rules for the House of Representatives that would stop duplicate programs before they start. There are thousands of government programs that should be eliminated or combined, but the first step to solve the problem is to stop Congress from creating any more.

Social Security Disability is a nest of fraud and apathetic government oversight. I have held numerous hearings and investigations as well as meeting face to face with many in the Administration to stop the waste. Social Security Disability is designed to help the most vulnerable in our society. When people scam their way into the system, they literally take money away from the disabled and the hard working American taxpayer. We now have some progress in reforming the system and oversight has increased, but the program still has a long way to go.

I discovered how the Department of Defense and the State Department used Human Trafficking and labor brokers to bring in foreign workers to bases and State Department facilities around the world. After two years of fighting, the House and Senate passed my legislation and it was signed into law.

The first month of my service in 2011, I started on a bill to limit the regulations on local businesses and local government that drive up the cost of every product and service. The federal government has no issue adding more and more mandates, but every American does have an issue paying more and more for every product and service just so some bureaucrat can file a report.

We all know the stories of absurd government studies and grants with little accountability and oversight. It is time for federal agencies to stop wasting the money of hardworking taxpayers. I am the author of the Grant Act, which pulls the federal grant process out of the darkness and into the sunshine.

Government waste must stop. Decisions that are made locally will be more efficient and more effective. So, let's take the power out of Washington D.C. and give control back to families and states.

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