02-16-2012, 08:51 PM
mrbigstuff wrote:
[quote=Mac-A-Matic]
Heard a report on NPR today telling of the Navy plan to relocated the USS Comfort from its current home port of Baltimore to Norfolk, VA by next March. Evidently the government will save $1.7 million per year.
Couldn't help but notice the irony of the government talking about saving money while my friends' (who runs a division of a large govt agency) biggest worry for this fiscal year is how to spend the $1.5 million surplus in his budget. He's not allowed to give it back. He has to spend it all. He cannot "save" it. If he doesn't actually spend it, he could be fired.
if it's ARRA funds (stimulus), then he IS supposed to spend it to create jobs. if it is not ARRA, then I can't offer an explanation, but gov't agencies usually take the funds back and put it into the big pot, so this must be some kind of strange agency.
Exactly. Stimulus funds are supposed to be spent quickly. On the other hand, claims such as the one made by mac-a-matic's friend for regular government agency budgets almost always end up being bogus except for the department of defense. I work for a federal agency and have worked for others in the past and there has always been intense pressure to cut costs (though I hear that is not the way it is for the department of defense).