You're watching...
How the Government Can Save $1T
Details
-
Description
Professor Paul Light of the NYU Wagner School of Public Service breaks down easy ways for the government to save $1 Trillion.
- Duration 3:10
- Date Jul 11, 2011
You're watching...
Professor Paul Light of the NYU Wagner School of Public Service breaks down easy ways for the government to save $1 Trillion.
Also in this playlist...
Auto-advance: ON
Auto-advanceThis transcript is automatically generated
What accounts -- continues toward the debt deadline our next guest has some -- -- -- working for both sides the -- -- by streamlining the federal government professor Paul light of us.
Wagner school public policy joining us now with his ideas dot polite to you work with senator Mark Warner and former fed chief Paul Volcker on this and you believe you can say the federal government one trillion dollar.
Well I think congress and the president can save the federal government one -- and it's not that hard to do.
A lot of it is low hanging fruit that's easily hackable.
If the two parties can get together and just look at the books and see what's there to harvest.
But it hasn't been really put on the table yet I mean just moments ago we are listening to the house speakers you probably heard.
Demanding no tax increases the president spoke earlier the negotiating through the weekend.
Why be taking this approach.
It's.
You know and number one members of congress in particular don't know much about the nuts and bolts of running.
An organization.
Many of them have been in politics all their lives and I've never done much more.
Then handle a handful of staff it's a very boring issue on top of that it's hard to explain your constituents.
You know they're standing around in piles of money that they could harvest but they're not looking down at their feet.
And it is not a very sexy issue it's not the kind of thing you can make a lot of political hey.
Ball but it's there and they should grab it right now and get moving off that platform -- on to the tougher stuff.
But -- would be tough to implement and that's possibly why it's.
Not says sexy tell -- about some of these particular some your your specific ideas for for federal government cutting.
You know the federal government has -- loaded with layers of management.
I mean there are dozens of layers between the top and the bottom of the federal government and far too many managers.
Getting in the way of getting the work done you could cut down the number of managers the number of layers between the top and bottom of government.
Cut down 30000.
Maybe 40000 positions that's a lot of money.
You can also make the federal government more efficient as a result you could also go out harvest all the money that is already -- the federal government.
We've got 300 billion dollars in delinquent taxes that could be collected.
We've got a hundred billion dollars a year in improper payments to dead people to.
Fraudulent contractors.
In Medicare males and Medicaid -- we can collect that.
We've got to wasteful number of properties that the federal government owns that we don't use.
How we could attack that we've got non tax that we've got tax that we've got improper payments.
You know it's a -- and all of that money merely needs to be collected and we're talking narrow 5600.
Billion dollars that we are old.
And that we can get back but you know it's just nobody's.
Issue at this particular point.
Mark Warner's taken a lead on some of these issues I think he's the go to person on getting some sort of reform.
Our rights and interesting ideas we thank you for sharing -- with us doctor -- life and why you.