What About Education Cuts? The Deficit Challenge
Deficit Challenge suggestions continue to pour in. Recently, one commenter suggested we cancel all new Education programs proposed or started under the Obama Administration. She writes:
The following are just new programmes from the proposed 2011 budget:
- Race to the Top -1.35 billion (2011 budget)
- Investing in innovation - 500 million
- Effective teaching and learning: literacy - 450 million
- Effective teaching and learning: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics - 300 million
- Effective teaching and learning for a well-rounded education - 265 million
- College pathways and accelerated learning - 100 million
- Effective teachers and leaders State grants - 2.5 billion
- Teacher and leader innovation fund - 950 million
- Teacher and leader pathways - 405 million
- Expanding educational options - 490 million
- Successful, safe, and healthy students - 410 million
These are all new programs that did not exist in 2009 and 2010. Here is the link to the Department of Education. I am not even cutting old programmes - just not creat[ing] new ones in 2011.
We'd like to thank our commenter for doing all the work for us here. If you add all these programs together, they are worth about $7.7 billion for FY2011 alone -- even if future spending on these programs remained flat in nominal terms (were not adjusted for inflation), that would be nearly $80 billion over ten years.
There are two important and large caveats, though. First of all, these programs are not in the budget baseline. So technically, simply choosing not to fund them wouldn't create any scoreable savings -- although it would be much cheaper than accepting the President's budget proposal.
More importantly, though, many of these programs are not so much new programs, as they are replacements or consolidations of other programs. For example, the $2.5 billion in "Effective teachers and leaders State grants" is meant to replace nearly $3 billion in "Teacher Quality State Grants." And the $410 million for "Successful, safe, and healthy students" funding is meant to replace six programs with $365 million in costs.
If we were simply measuring the added costs of these proposals, relative to the FY2010 budget, it would come to closer to $3 billion in 2011. This assumes that we still enact the policies which save money (like the State grants).
$3 billion a year, of course, is still real money. And we appreciate the suggestion. In addition to it, here are some other education cuts which could help get us further:
| Savings (billions) | ||
| 5-year | 10-year | |
| Eliminate National Science Foundation Spending on Elementary and Secondary Education |
$0.4 | $0.9 |
| Eliminate Funding for Abstinence-Only Education | $0.4 | $0.9 |
| Eliminate the Even Start Program | $0.3 | $0.6 |
| Standardize the Interest Rates Charged on PLUS Loans at 8.5% | $0.9 | $2.2 |
| Eliminate Subsidized Loans to Graduate Students | $10.4 | $18.8 |
| Eliminate Administrative Fees Paid to Schools in the Campus-Based Student Aid and Pell Grant Programs |
$0.8 | $1.8 |
| Reduce Funding for the Arts and Humanities | $2.0 | $4.9 |
| Eliminate subsidies for private "Family Federal Education Loans" and replace with direct student loans | $25.1 | $43.3 |
As always, we welcome all additional suggestions; and will try to provide estimated budgetary savings for them, if we can.
Feel free to offer your own in the comment queue below.
And check out some of the other options we've looked at here.
Big Bureaucracy
It is great to know that the Obama administration is masking Bush's education programmes as their own. They really got me there with the renaming of the nonsense. Put a lipstick on the pig - still a pig. Bush wasted so much money on education - Obama was supposed to be different.
I still insist all 7.7 billion new programmes (they got new names - I consider them a new product) got to go.
Thank you for identifying the additional opportunities to save. These are old programmes. I agree that graduate students should be able to make it on their own. The government may subsidize basic education - high school and undergraduate for the smart kids.
On eliminating subsidies for private "Family Federal Education Loans" - we are not saving 43 billion, because if I understand correctly the same money will be used for funding more direct student loans - so those $43 billion will stay.
Basically the only activity in the department of education that makes sense is the Federal Student Aid - which may be administered by the Social Security Administration with the other welfare programmes or by IRS (since the aid is based on income level).
After we pass the FSA to another Department we accomplished the ultimate goal of closing the Department of Education as unnecessary. We did not have Department of education when we went to the Moon, when the computer was invented, or the telephone.
Would you give us an estimate how much we save when closing the Department of Education (keeping the Federal Student Aid in IRS or SS)
After that we will be free to move to the next department - of Energy.
Baby steps! Itsy-Bitsy Spider!
Greetings! Ellie from http://www.bigbureaucracy.com/
Big Bureaucracy
We went to the Moon and we did not have a Department of Education. Today we have Department of Education and we don't have money to go to the Moon!
Big Bureaucracy
The Department of Energy was created by Jimmy Carter to end the US dependence on foreign oil. 30 years after - it is not working.
Let’s through the 2011 budget of the Department of Energy
http://www.mbe.doe.gov/budget/11budget/Content/Apprsum.pdf
There are certain activities performed by the DOE that should be transferred back to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers:
- Strategic Petroleum Reserve
- Science
- Environmental Clean-up (Defense and non-defense)
- Power Marketing Administration
Atomic Energy Defense Activities (weapons, naval reactors and defense non-proliferation) should be transferred to Department of the Army
Energy Information Administration should be transferred to the ESA (Department of Commerce)
Loans that were already made by the Department of Energy should be transferred to the Treasury to be serviced until paid.
Tax-payer already appropriate 5 billion dollars for science each year for the Department of Energy. All DOE extra research programs that are not in the science budget can be abolished:
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy – $2.4 billion
Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability - $186 million
Nuclear Energy - $824 million
Fossil Energy Research and Development – 587 million
Energy Transformation Acceleration Fund – 300 million
The proposed $500 million for Innovative Technology Loan Guarantee Program in 2010 should not be approved.
Total: we save 4.8 billion dollars and we close the Department of Energy.
Greetings! Ellie from http://www.bigbureaucracy.com/
I absolutely agree with your
I absolutely agree with your opinion here. Education budget cuts are really annoying because it's the most important thing in our life. People are seeking education but it gets more and more expensive with every single year. I did a free career testing few days ago and it showed that I have some nice perspectives in my life. However I don't know if I will be able to achieve them because of high education costs. I just hope that our government will change their mind and we will be able to get the education we want. Thanks for the post here by the way.
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