Creative Ways To Track and Cut Government Spending

Government spending feels like it simply cannot be stopped. No matter which party is in the White House, spending just increases. Republicans call for spending cuts to things they don’t like and Democrats call for spending cuts to things they don’t like, while both of them miraculously end up increasing the deficit. Government spending is now rightly being recognized as the threat to our nation that it is, but no one seems to have the willpower or ideas needed to significantly diminish it. The root problem with government spending is irresponsibility in using the hard earned resources of the people. Although spending less than the government brings in isn’t comfortable, it’s often simple. This article will explore a few different methods which the state could implement to cut spending if they really cared about it. Sadly, this article will get lost in the vault of Internet content, and only be accessible via the way back machine, even as the US continues to spiral into debt, not heeding any of these suggestions or taking any meaningful action to cut spending.

U.S. federal, state, and local government abound with stories of financial opacity that would be illegal in almost any other sector. The governor of California has repeatedly vetoed legislation to see where money intended to be spent on homelessness has gone. A lack of transparency about money intended to help those in situations of dire need should raise some eyebrows. The first step to cutting spending is radical transparency in where government money is spent. Businesses often detail how they spent their money just to show the shareholders that they were good stewards of their equity. A government should be far more transparent than that, as the money truly is the people’s. In the past, an argument could be made that the time and energy spent tracking spending would be counterproductive as time and money spent tracking waste would increase overall spend. All levels of government repeatedly fail audits, and face no consequences. While the amount of paperwork complexity involved in the past made successfully completing audits cost intensive, AI and modern data infrastructure could create a federal back office that can cleanly keep track of the majority of its financial data. …