SAVE Award 2011 Ideas

Require all federal agencies to turn in to Congress a one page document explaining what article(s) of the Constitution authorizes their existence. Eliminate those agencies that do not have clear and specific authorization in the Constitution.

The White House has said the freeze will save $5 billion by the end of 2012. It was pitched as a deficit reduction effort, yet the money was spent on anything but the deficit. Now there's talk of 5 and 10 year pay freezes.

"All USG agencies/departments, and the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches, should be funded at 75% of their end of fiscal year 2009 expenditures. One exception is DoD: DoD would be funded at 80% of its expenditures for fiscal year 2010. Rationale: to reconstitute forces expended for the previous ten years.
Funding would be held at these respective levels for 3 fiscal years, with only growth to aligned with... more »

Allow the donation of the value of excess annual leave directly to deficit reduction. Employees could elect to donate their excess annual leave. Also, the value of all lost annual leave could be used to reduce the federal deficit.

Last year we borrowed 47% of what we spent. It's like making $53,000 and buying a house worth $100,000...every year. Not approved!

If 47% of each Congressman's pay was withheld, do you think the country would be borrowing this much?

The federal government spends an exorbitant amount of funds every year on travel and TDY. Most of the funds spent on TDY missions could be used to offset other costs for more pressing issues. There are reasons that many directors and leaders need to travel in order to satisfy mission requirements, but a majority of TDY missions for many others were/are unnecessary. Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal monies can... more »

Save money by paying down the debt, and don't let default happen (or else interest rates rise, and the US debt will crush us!). The equation is taxes on income are source of funding for Govt. Currently govt is working on the wrong part by thinking to reduce Soc Sec, Medicaid, which help people, while ignoring the fact that TWENTYFIVE PERCENT of workers are UN/UNDER-EMPLOYED!! (9% unemployed, 17% underemployed = 26%) Now... more »

Stop funding NPR. The tax dollars allocated to NPR is a small fraction of NPR's funds, but could reduce the deficit. Funding NPR was necessary in its infancy, but it has shown that it can flourish without the amount they get from the federal government.

A lot of boys and girls grow up and want to serve their country. These children see their parents working hard, paying their bills, being honest, and respecting each other. When some of these children grow up, they decide that they want to run for political office. Some of these big children get elected to the Congress in Washington DC.

WHAT HAPPENS??? A lot of these big children forget the importance of paying their... more »

The Government could save $50 billion per year by having two shifts of white collar employees work each day. Office space costs $50,000/year for each employee yet we only use space 30% of time. We can no longer afford to have banker's hours for all. With over 2 million federal employees this cost-free paradigm change could avoid lay offs/furloughs and reduce pollution. This would cut overhead per employees in half. Savings... more »

With today's budget constraints within the federal government along with the deficit - traveling for training should be at the top of cuts proposed by all areas of the government. In 1995 while working for the Dept. of the Navy, our training consisted of Video Teleconferencing versus traveling to other cities/states in many instances. The VA recently within the past couple years has the capability of V-Tel but I don't... more »

Too many in the House, the Senate and the White House do not want to analyze the regulations they and their predecessors have written into law and make the tough decisions - STOP doing what doesn't work and wastes money, STOP doing frivolous things that causes businesses to raise the cost of business and stops them from expanding and hiring more people, STOP doing things that causes needless paperwork and time-consuming... more »