COMMENTARY | President Obama on Friday, January 13, announced that he is asking Congress for the power to consolidate parts of the federal government in an effort to eliminate more than 1,000 jobs and save $3 billion over 10 years. Reading further into the plan, it’s clear that this is a step in the right direction. However, possible ramifications harming the U.S. trade policy and some prominent leaders such as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus have expressed concerns regarding the government’s ability “to aggressively open new markets to American-made goods and services and create U.S. jobs.”
Despite the possible implications, I still stand by my statement that this is a step in the right direction. There is significant wasteful spending and ingrained bureaucracy in Washington and it has to be fixed. Will this one statement do the job? No it will not — there has to be more action taken. Specifically, this latest action would have minimal impact on the number of workers and money spent in the country’s 2.1 million employee federal bureaucracy. Furthermore, the proposal states that 1,000 to 2,000 jobs would be cut through attrition as people leave their jobs due to retirement or change of employment. This does not provide a concrete date for the project to go into effect and will likely not produce visible results in the immediate future.
Additional processes have to be checked, unnecessary spending has to be curbed and this must all be done in conjunction. This means that a concentrated effort must be made, not individual proposals that may or may not work.
The issues at hand have been present for some time and are widely recognized. The timing of the president’s statement comes at a very opportune time — near elections, when it will resonate with Americans. This sentiment was recently expressed by Republican critics that questioned whether Obama was seeking to make good on his State of the Union speech last January or simply scrambling to appease voters. Despite this criticism, this is a very savvy move on Obama’s part because the proposal embodies the traditional Republican position of reducing government. This will undoubtedly help his reelection cause as he will likely secure a victory on an issue the Republicans usually champion.