"W.H. wants input on savings"The Obama White House is now offering Americans the chance to choose their favorite idea to cut government spending, by voting online from a list provided by the administration.
After taking more than 38,000 suggestions from federal employees on how to slash expenditures, the Obama administration has posted four options online from which Americans can choose one to be included in the budget. Voting takes place at SaveAward.gov.
The four cost-cutting ideas, according to a White House release, are as follows:
-- Scheduling Social Security appointments online, suggested by Christie Dickson, who works in the Social Security Administration and wrote: “We set up appointments about two-thirds of the time on the phone.”
-- Letting veterans take unused medication home from the hospital, instead of having it thrown away when they’re released. Nancy Fichtner, who suggested the idea, wrote that medications like ointments, inhalers, and eye drops are disposed of but could be used by others.
-- Depositing fees and other money collected at national forests into local banks, suggested by Julie Fosbender, who works at a national forest in West Virginia. Fosbender wrote that when the Forest Service collects money, it goes through a long process that includes money orders, collection officers, remittance reports and delivery to San Francisco. “Why can’t we just deposit our collections into a local bank?” she asked.
-- Avoiding redundant inspections of subsidized housing, suggested by Huston Prescott, who wrote that many grant programs perform physical inspections, income calculations and annual audits, and then “report the same information in multiple formats. Countless hours spend recreating information could be used in more productive ways.”
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http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/1209/direct_democracy_3b3949b7-62ec-4b1a-a08f-fc21ff1382bd.html 
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