Zero-based budgeting (ZBB) is a budgeting technique in which all expenses must be justified for a new period or year starting from zero, versus starting with the previous budget and adjusting it as needed.
All government departments must perform zero based budgeting. Proposed by Vivek Ramaswami - “Start from zero for every department and ask what (if any) spending is required instead of just taking last year’s budget as the default". This will stop the ever increasing budget allocations wand improve accountability. Forcing every department of the government to justify its existence and financial costs each year would go a long way in returning fiscal sanity to Washington.
Yes! I’d love to see the next President do this in their annual budget proposals, getting Congress to take this approach is probably a longer-term goal but one that I’d also love to see.
Yes! One of the most effective means to reducing waste and fraud while introducing accountability. Each federal agency should be required to justify all expenditures annually, ensuring every dollar spent is tied to clear priorities and measurable outcomes.
This is critical that this be done, and secondly, I would offer that for the Department of Defense (DoD) needs to move away from annual appropriations and execute a two year budget for operations and maintenance(O& M) appropriations. I have personally seen the malfeasance in Department of Defense budgeting with having to spend at the end of the fiscal year on useless and wasteful things, if allowed to carryover into the next year, the budgeting process will be much better utilized. Also, the utter duplication that exists in the DoD with the services and all the layered OSD and Joint Staff bureaucracy over it makes for an ever expanded bloated bureaucracy, as well as as within the services. Make the Pentagon a triangle with a three services Departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force. Redirect the Joint Staff to solely warfighting.