In June, President Barack Obama announced a new campaign against fraud and waste. “No amount of waste is acceptable —not when it’s your money; not at a time when so many families are already cutting back,” he declared in a video.
But on Tuesday, he will be attending an 11.25 a.m. campaign fundraiser at the Hyatt Regency hotel while Vice President Joe Biden handles an 11:30 a.m. meeting of the waste and fraud task force.
The anti-waste campaign was touted by Obama in June as a priority for the administration.
“Targeting waste and making government more efficient have been a priority for my administration since day one. But as we work to tackle the budget deficit, we need to step up our game,” he said.
Obama passed the task over to Biden, who also appeared in the video to declare that cutting waste “depends on a relentless focus on making this a priority focus that can’t be delegated.”
Biden’s Tuesday priority meeting on waste in the government’s $3.6 trillion budget will wrap up in approximately 40 minutes.
Much of the meeting is expected to be taken up with short speeches by Biden, Secretary of the Teasury Tim Geithner, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Jim Cole, the deputy attorney general.
Sebelius and Cole are also slated to tout the campaign during a 12:15 p.m. phone call to reporters.
In June, Biden described the anti-waste campaign in grand terms. “We’re not just eliminating fraud and waste. We hope to be instilling an entire new culture that not only our administration, but every succeeding administration, will in fact pursue,” he said.
“We’re going to give you the government you expect and deserve,” he added.
Obama, too, had grand hopes about the anti-waste campaign: “We need to go after every dime, we need to make government work for you.”
White House officials have not released any information about the fundraiser.