Let the Squealing and Whining Begin!

The White House's Major Savings and Reforms in the President's 2006 Budget is juicy reading for any fiscal conservative.

Highlights:

Program Terminations.—Terminations of 99 discretionary programs will reduce spending by $8.8 billion in 2006.

Spending Reductions.—Proposed reductions of 55 programs in discretionary spending will reduce 2006 spending by $6.5 billion.


Unfortunately the Department of Eduation is not one of the programs being terminated. (No...Porkopolis is not anti-education. Porkopolis is for State-based education administration. Porkopolis advocates elimination of this bureaucracy and returning the savings of over $70 Billion a year back to State Education Departments.)

An interesting morsel from the recommendations is the following:

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In 2004 the Office of Management and Budget implemented a program assesment methodology called PART (Program Assessment Rating Tool). It's goal is to "...to reform the budget process by establishing a systematic, consistent process for developing program performance ratings and then using that information to make budget decisions." Here's are the results of that assessment for the 2006 Budget from page 6 of the Major Savings and Reforms in the President's 2006 Budget:

This marks the third year that the PART was used to assess programs’ strengths and weaknesses and to make recommendations for improved program performance. These assessments, in turn, are factors in decisions about program funding. Over the next two years, the Administration will assess all remaining Federal programs. To date, the Administration has assessed:

607 programs (60 percent of the Federal budget, or $1.4 trillion) with the followingprogram ratings:

o 15% are Effective
o 26% are Moderately Effective
o 26% are Adequate
o 4% are Ineffective
o 29% are Results Not Demonstrated

According to this analysis, 33% of the programs analyzed were either ineffective or didn't demonstrate results! If we give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they got it wrong by 50%, it would still be at least 15% of these programs are ineffective or didn't demonstrate results.