Deficit commission finds a few more cuts to make

President Obama's deficit-reduction commission will propose saving $1 billion by eliminating overlap in Homeland Security Department grant programs and $100 million by cutting the budget for obsolete international broadcast operations by 10 percent.

These are the only two additions to a list of more than $200 billion in proposed cuts the commission is fine-tuning, according to a revised draft of an "illustrative savings" list the commission is expected to release soon as an appendix to its report.

On Friday, only 11 of the 18 commissioners supported the deficit-reduction package, falling short of the 14 needed to approve the report.

The panel initially put out a list of 58 proposed cuts totaling about $200 billion in November when it first unveiled its package. The current list includes 59 individual cuts.

With regard to DHS grants, the commission was critical of the agency for its management of grant programs it oversees. The department has been in the cross hairs of government watchdogs, such as the Government Accountability Office.

"The agency has been plagued with management challenges and has quickly become, in many cases, little more than a clearinghouse for federal grants on which states rely to fund their regular local law enforcement needs such as fire trucks, vehicles, and general security equipment," the list said.

The 10 percent cut to the Broadcasting Board of Governors' international broadcasting operations account comes after Congress provided $734 million for fiscal year 2010. The Senate State-Foreign Operations Appropriations bill would provide $744 million for international broadcasting operations in fiscal year 2011. The House State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee called for a total of $757 million in fiscal year 2011 BBG funding.

The BBG oversees a host of overseas broadcasting operations, including the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio and TV Martí, and the Middle East Broadcasting Network stations of Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television.

The commission believes that most of the BBG's programs are worthwhile, but they also believe some are no longer useful-but did not say which.

"While some of these broadcast operations serve to promote democracy and freedom in certain parts of the world, others have outlived their utility," the commission said.

The commission also tweaked a proposal to cut the federal workforce by 10 percent by not replacing positions as federal workers retire. The updated version of the documents removes a sentence that says the proposal would not take effect until 2012 "to decrease the impact on overall national employment levels."

A proposal to create a cut-and-invest committee to trim waste has now been updated to say that the "committee would be charged with finding discretionary program savings of 2 percent below the president's budget, half of which, or about $11 billion in 2015, would be applied to deficit reduction while the other half would be directed toward high-priority investments in education, infrastructure, or research and development."