Obama To Announce Choice For "Chief Performance Officer" Wednesday

President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday will announce his selection for the role of "chief performance officer," a newly created position that will work to scrub the federal budget and reform government, a Democratic official told CNN.

The person will "help put us on a path to fiscal discipline," the official said.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[BillMelater]

Outstanding!

[QuestionEveryone]

Another Clinton admin appointment...what's with this? I guess Hillary should have won the nomination.

[blood1]

If Obama is sincere about this - great! I don't know who he has in mind...but most important to make this a meaningful position is to give them all the authority and tools needed to ask questions about the line items and to be able to keep asking until they get a straight / real answer.

I can hear it now - as a congressperson or department head was "unavailable" . The avoidance will cause a deletion from the budget rather than a "pass".

The progress of this audit should be reported on Change.gov. The report should include those items for which they are being stonewalled, items that have been eliminated and items that have been given approval.


This cannot be performed by a single individual...but a small team who work independent of each other...and then meet to discuss their individual findings and report those findings. They need to have specific goals and timelines and accountability if they fail to meet them.

[mcantwell]

Sounds good.

[NeoCentristDonkey]

Does this have anything to do with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts?

[Grunty1]

Is that where you got your tr0lling license?

[harriscrl3]

I hope he/she starts with the Pentagon and the war in Iraq I'm sure we can scrub BILLIONS there.

Carol

[ohiomark]

Along with the 600,000 new govenment jobs that Obama wants to "create" and now this new position of "Chief Performance Officer", he is going to make Bush's expansion of government look like he just hired a couple of interns.

When the private sector creates a job, it doesn't cost the taxpayer anything and the government gets tax revenue from that job.

When the government creates a job, it costs the taxpayers money and the tax revenue it creates doesn't cover itself, so the rest of us have to.

We'll see how much this "scrubber" will shrink the government.

[rockyb26]

catch up. he already said that 80% of the 3 million jobs will be in the private sector.

[ohiomark]

Yes, I know, but expanding the government by another 20% is counter productive.

How about 100% of the new jobs in the private sector and cutting government by 10%.

[Grunty1]

You've had no problems with Bush overspending by 8 TRILLION dollars in 8 years, so we really don't care what your opinion is on the topic.

8 TRILLION dollars of new debt and not a single thing to show for it!

[swiss-ski]

You have no idea what you are commenting about!

[NotFooledByDistractions]

I don't care as much about the size of the government as I do for the competence in my government. Competence is something that has be absent the last 8 years. I'd rather see my tax dollars pay for that competence than flush it down the Liberty University black whole of government waste like we've seen under the bush admin.

[VPN]

He can start with the 10/12 Billion a month going down the drain in Iraq, and I'm sure if he looked he could shrink the Pentagon Budget by a few hundred billion a year of WASTEFUL spending.

[JohnFromCensornati]

Good. I hope he/she is a good scrubber. The war on drugs, the war on Iraq, the war on Afghanistan, and the war on the federal treasury all need to be completely scrubbed.

[Rog49Thomas]

First President Elect Neo began by talking of accountability in government.

Now he's talking about performance.

How far is he going to go with these potentially dangerous ideas?

I'm worried that we're headed towards morality in government.

[Grunty1]

Republicans are certainly terrified of the idea of accountability and performance in government, mostly because they don't do either one :-)

[Rog49Thomas]

Luckily for us though they have strong family values.

As the saying goes "My values, your family"

[swiss-ski]

Grunty1 you are soooooooooooooo wrong. Get some sleep and then try again.

[pupbayer]

A new position? Bush made government bigger. How'd that work for him? We need to streamline not expand.

[greeniefromOH]

I'm sure there will be cuts as well. Hang in there.

[PallinAround]

We can start streamlining with Bush's signature debacle - Department of Homeland Security. An absolute clusterf#ck if ever there was one.

[Grunty1]

You seemed to like it just fine.

[scooperss]

Have we been going this long without such a person/office?

[vastrat]

Like Obama; however, concerned that he is trying to appease the GOP a little to much (he is not going to make them happy). Further delays in a stimulus package is not going to be good.

WRT this position: It sound a bit "red-tape(ish)" to me, but whatever works.

[dmacgregor]

I applaud Obama's intent to insure accountability but I agree with JZ735... we don't need more bureaucracy. Why not simply designate the Government Accountability Office's director to be his Chief Performance Officer? The GAO already performs this function. Obama would just need to enforce the existing rules that require agencies to correct accountability problems documented in GAO audits.

[schatsie]

I agree with you about the GAO. but their focus is the legislature and how it is implemented...not the outcome.. They do perform analysis also, so I would assume they can do the work on the outcomes and I do think this is a good place to put the responsibility...and maybe it does need to be cabinet level.

[dmacgregor]

The GAO's charter isn't limited to the legislature. I'm retired DoD and dealt with several GAO audit reports that addressed accountability problems with our projects. Unfortunately, the existing process allowed timely but non-responsive agency reponses to go unchallenged. I like your idea of making the Chief Performance Officer/GAO Director a Cabinet level position. Perhaps this level of visibility would give the GAO the power to force agencies to truly resolve identified accountability problems.

[Bitsko]

My wife thinks the title "Chief Performance Officer" is hilarious. Figure it out yourselves.

[teron678]

Your wife has a dirty mind .. no offense ...

[schatsie]

I have a dirty mind also, it must be because of all the Performance drug advertising.. Gosh I wish we could get all the drug advertising cut to nothing.... think about vioxx and phenphen and ambien and what else...

[SethBLiNK]

I know the perfect candidate for this. He's been a White House Chief of Staff and a Director of OMBin an adminstration that balanced the budget.

And the best part is, he's pretty much retired now, just chillin' on his farm, teaching some college courses and doing some think tank stuff, so we know he's available.

His name is Leon Pan... what's that? Oh, never mind.

[moda31]

how about a sec. of telling the republicans to suck it so we can get stuff done?

[TwentyCharactersLong]

That's basically what Karl Rove tried, except with the names flipped. If those tactics worked, then Social Security would have been privatized in 2005.