the bistro off broadway

Portsmouth Daily Times
Portman works to cut wasteful spending
By Wayne Allen 

U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio), in a conference call with Ohio reporters Thursday, highlighted some of his and others efforts to curtail wasteful government spending. 

“Today we issued another example of Washington wasteful spending, every month were doing this. An example of wasteful spending at the Department of State, we have received information they have spent $630,000 to persuade people to like their Facebook page,” Portman said. “I don’t know how this helps promote our foreign policy agenda.” 

Portman said, with the federal government running budget deficits with averages about $10,000 per-household per-year and a debt of $17 trillion dollars, his office is going after examples of waste. 

“This shows there is an opportunity to tighten the belt further in government,” Portman said. “Wasteful spending like this has to be part of the solution in addition to entitlement reform and other things we’ve talked about.” 

On Wednesday Portman and Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) introduced the Federal Employee Accountability Act, a bill aimed at reducing ‘official time’ for government employees. 

According to released information from Portman’s office, “under the practice of ‘official time’, as authorized under 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, federal employees can be paid by taxpayers to complete duties that are not related to the mission of their agency, allowing in some cases for employees to perform union-related activities – some even full-time – while on federal payroll. According to the Office of Personnel Management, in 2011, the government spent $155 million on 3.4 million hours used for ‘official time.’” 

“Using taxpayer dollars to finance what is often highly partisan and political full-time union work is a grievous violation of the public’s trust,” Coburn said in a released statement. “Sadly, this is a widespread problem. Agencies like the IRS and VA have hundreds of employees on their payrolls that do nothing but full-time union work paid for by taxpayer dollars. This bill will restore the public’s trust by ensuring federal employees – and the taxpayer funds that support them… 

Read the rest of the article at the Portsmouth Daily Times

 


 
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