Lost funds

There's no shortage of ideas for how to cut federal government spending, as members of the new Congress quickly found out since proceeding in January.

The Government Accountability Office report that came out recently removed two programs from its list of 30 trouble spots but added another.

A careful reading of the report, which every member of Congress and every agency head should take to heart, provides numerous areas to cut costs and improve operations for the American public.

Removed from the list were concerns over Department of Defense processing of security clearances. With terrorism the threat that it is, shortening the time and improving the process of authorizing security clearances is an important concern, and one where the DOD has shown marked improvement.

Another area removed from the list is the 2010 Census, which has been completed on time and within budget.

The GAO has added, however, a concern about the ability of the Department of Interior to adequately track oil and gas operations on public lands and assess appropriate royalties for this public resource.

Interior has not evaluated its royalty collection system in 25 years, and the GAO fears that billions of dollars of royalties are not collected and thus lost to the public.

Interior is also not adequately tracking volumes of natural resources extracted, again a permanent loss of revenue for the nation.

- Canon City (Colo.) Daily Record