Challenged by President Obama three months ago to deliver $100 million in savings for the current fiscal year, his Cabinet secretaries collectively responded by identifying $102 million of savings opportunities, the “Wall Street Journal” reported.  Regrettably, most of these “savings” opportunities were actions that should have been done as a matter of course, without White House pressure:

• Department of Justice: adopting two-sided copying,  for the first time ($430,000 fiscal 2010 savings)
• Department of Justice:  discontinue use of travel agents, book travel on-line ($4 million)
• Forest Service: will no longer paint newly purchased vehicles green ($1.8 million)
• Office of Thrift Supervision: phase out unused phone lines ($320,000)
• U.S. Navy: delete unused internet accounts ($5 million)
• Air Force: switching from specially prepared fuel, to standard jet fuel, plus some additives ($52 million)
• Dept. of HUD: turning off the lights in non-working hours, and centralizing PC power supply ($525,000)

The article is a reminder that there are sometimes ample savings available to any [government or business] organization which do not require any cuts in programs or services whatsoever.  Of course, finding such savings usually requires someone to be motivated to look for them in the first place.