The coronavirus pandemic has struck our country in ways few of us could have imagined. The virus has touched nearly every one of our citizens either physically or economically and has forced Congress to consider measures that we normally would have dismissed. But while we’re doing everything we can to mitigate the damage caused by COVID-19, we must continue to keep an eye on the health of our fiscal situation as well.
Last week, Congress passed and President Trump signed a $2.2 trillion economic relief package. The bill contained several provisions that I supported: hundreds of billions in loans for job creators, delays on tax filing deadlines, incentives for small businesses to keep workers employed during the pandemic, and much more.
However, to entice Democrats to support the bill, frivolous items were placed in the final text. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her caucus never intended to let this crisis go to waste. House Majority Whip James Clyburn even said that the pandemic was a “tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.”
Fundamentally, a crisis like the one we currently face should be a time when folks in both ideological camps ease up on the rhetoric and try and find a way to help people get through this situation. The virus doesn’t have a political agenda, and our solutions to it shouldn’t include any either.
One of the most nonpartisan issues we can all rally behind is the notion that our government should not be wasting the dollars we send to Washington. Every taxpayer dollar that is wasted is a dollar that isn’t spent in the war against the coronavirus. Earlier this year, I began a series to highlight wasteful government programs and propose real solutions to stop it. I already spotlighted tens of billions in waste in dozens of federal departments. For example, tens of millions of dollars are being paid out to dead people. A Social Security Administration inspector general’s report found 6.5 million people in the government’s system that are somehow 112 years old. The Department of Veterans Affairs paid out $37 million to deceased veterans. Over $1 billion has been sent to farmers who had been dead for several years. Medicare paid for $3.6 million in prescription drugs for beneficiaries who are no longer with us.
Another absurd example of waste involves nearly 4,000 empty or underused federal buildings. The federal government owns property ranging from warehouses to parking lots to bathrooms. A Congressional Research Service report found “3,120 buildings that were vacant, and another 7,859 that were partially empty.” If federal agencies were able to sell this property on the open market, taxpayers could save $15 billion over the next five years.
Of course, stopping just one of these wasteful expenditures won’t cover the full cost of the government’s COVID-19 response, but it will save real money. Billions of dollars may not be much in Washington, but imagine how many face masks and medical gowns that we could buy with just a fraction of the dollars that we would save by selling off a vacant building. This is an all-hands-on-deck level crisis that will require a high level of fiscal discipline to navigate.
The crisis presents a daunting challenge. We will need the leadership of our president, the skill of our medical experts, and the faith of our citizens. But we cannot ignore common sense ways to make resources available quickly. Now is the time to redouble our efforts to look for any opportunity to save taxpayer dollars, so that they can be redirected to support our neighbors during this time of need. That is how we will overcome this crisis.
Rep. Ted Budd, a Republican, represents North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District. He serves on the House Financial Services Committee.
