Washington - Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) announced a campaign to “shut down the waste” by calling on Congress and President Obama to focus on eliminating wasteful government spending both during discussions over the continuing resolution and the debt ceiling and throughout any future budget discussions. The group will be issuing recommendations every day through both traditional and social media, and airing online videos to ensure that taxpayers and elected officials are not allowed to forget the hundreds of billions of dollars that can be saved by shutting down the waste.

 “There is no excuse for wasting the taxpayers’ money at any time. Such profligacy is particularly pernicious at this critical time during which parts of the government are shut down and the debt limit will soon be reached. Throughout the duration of ‘Shut Down the Waste’ campaign, CAGW will be highlighting an array of recommended spending cuts from its Prime Cuts 2013 along with proposals from both public and private sources,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.

The CAGW initiative will be based on two irrefutable principles: First, sequestration spending levels are the minimum amount that must be maintained, whether the current limits on discretionary spending stay in place by retaining the existing law or are replaced by an equal amount of entitlement and discretionary spending cuts. Second, superfluous spending on duplicative and overlapping programs should be immediately curtailed.

Prime Cuts is a comprehensive list of recommended spending cuts from both government and private-sector sources. CAGW has published Prime Cuts since 1993; the 2013 report contains 557 recommendations that would save taxpayers $580.6 billion in one year and $1.8 trillion over five years. The report includes more than $29 billion in five-year savings from President Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget, which is a good place to start negotiations over larger spending cuts.

Many of the proposals in Prime Cuts have been reiterated elsewhere, including the three Government Accountability Office annual reports on government spending in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has estimated that the annual cost of the duplication and overlap identified in these three reports is more than $395 billion.

The clear evidence of massive government waste stands in sharp contrast to the muddled and disconnected views of members of Congress who blindly support a “clean” CR and debt ceiling increase, such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Rep. Pelosi stated on CNN’s State of the Union that “The cupboard is bare, there are no more cuts to make.” CAGW’s “Shut Down the Waste” campaign will help refute such absurd claims.

“During the past five years, government spending and deficits have soared while average American families have seen their incomes fall. President Obama and congressional leaders owe nothing less to taxpayers than to sit down together and agree to shut down the waste so that essential government services can continue to be provided and the debt ceiling can be raised in conjunction with additional spending cuts,” concluded Schatz.

CAGW is a private, non-partisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, mismanagement, and inefficiency in government.