Issa presses agencies to detail sequestration alternatives

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa called Friday upon the heads of 17 federal agencies to identify unnecessary or wasteful programs that could be scrapped as an alternative to the upcoming sequester cuts.

“We cannot avert sequestration without a plan to end the undisciplined and unsustainable federal spending that resulted in the sequester in the first place,” Issa (R-Calif.) wrote in letters sent to the agency heads.

In it, Issa points to hundreds of cases of wasteful or duplicative spending that the committee has discovered with help from agency inspectors general. Cutting that spending alone, he argued, would save enough money to cancel the government-wide sequester cuts, which total $85 billion.

“The President agrees. He cited cutting government spending on ‘wasteful programs that don’t work’ as part of his preferred alternative to the sequester,” Issa wrote. “I am writing to request your assistance in identifying such programs.”
 
The letters were sent to the following agencies:
 
•    U.S. Department of Agriculture
•    U.S. Department of Commerce
•    Department of Defense
•    U.S. Department of Education
•    U.S. Department of Energy
•    U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
•    U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
•    Department of Homeland Security
•    U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
•    Department of the Interior
•    U.S. Department of Justice
•    U.S. Department of Labor
•    U.S. Small Business Administration
•    U.S. Department of State
•    U.S. Department of Transportation
•    Department of the Treasury
•    U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

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