While the revised FY 2000 budget was not delivered on time, the Turnbull administration delivered a document $54 million leaner the second time around.
Now senators will have a chance to pull it apart. Most of the first day of the rescheduled budget hearing was spent with top officials of the Office of Management and Budget, Internal Revenue Bureau and Finance Department.
Finance Committee Chairwoman Lorraine Berry said she and the Senate Post Audit Division worked late into the night Tuesday reviewing the revised documents prior to the start of the hearings.
As he presented the revised document to the Senate Finance Committee, Management and Budget Director Ira Mills said the projected 10 percent to 15 percent budget cuts must be implemented or the government's financial picture will worsen by the day.
Mills later outlined a lengthy list of programs and services to be trimmed or in some cases eliminated to realize the savings. In many cases Mills acknowledged the value or need for programs or services being cut.
Claudette Farrington, director of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, said the government must immediately break the habit of spending money it doesn't have in hand and falling behind on revenue collection. She said the government must look at how it pays its bills.
"We know that we have a lot of outstanding bills," she said. "If we do not have some sort of cash – whether it be by Sept. 30 or early October – the revenues presented here in the Year 2000 budget, those revenues are going to be used to pay for debt which occurred in 1999. So it means that you will be starting off with a shortfall."
Getting a handle on the fiscal crisis is also important because the Turnbull administration is working out an agreement with the federal government for deferred repayments on hurricane-community disaster loans. Administration officials are also in the process of negotiating a $100 million bond, which Mills said will be used in part to repay a smaller loan taken to meet the government payroll earlier this year.
Finance Commissioner Bernice Turnbull told the committee 85 percent of government expenditures are spent on payroll, leaving little to meet obligations like vendor payments. Finance officials assured lawmakers they would be able to continue meeting payroll through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.
But trimming the payroll will be a priority on the fiscal reorganization plan, they said. Most of the savings would come through attrition programs and promoting early retirement for older government workers, Mills said.
