On Tuesday, President-elect Barack Obama nominated Congressional Budget Office chief Peter Orszag to be the director of the White House budget office. Obama instructed him to examine closely federal spending to cut out wasteful programs.

President-elect Barack Obama: “But if we are going to make the investments we need, we also have to be willing to shed the spending that we don’t need. In these challenging times, when we’re facing both rising deficits and a shrinking economy, budget reform is not an option; it’s a necessity. We can’t sustain a system that bleeds billions of taxpayer dollars on programs that have outlived their usefulness or exist solely because of the power of politicians, lobbyists or interest groups. We simply can’t afford it.”