"Will ensure that federal contracts over $25,000 are competitively bid."

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"Obama believes that a critical step in restoring fiscal discipline is enforcing pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) budgeting rules which require new spending commitments or tax changes to be paid for by cuts to other programs or new revenue."

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"Obama will meet early in the budgeting process each year with congressional leaders and the nation's leading Veterans' Service Organizations (VSOs) to ensure the VA budget is always given 'must-pass' status."

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"Our military engages in a wide range of humanitarian activities that build friends and allies at the regional and ground level, most remarkably during the response to the tsunami in South and Southeast Asia. This demonstration of American military professionalism and aid won back local hearts in key Muslim states. Yet, such strategic and high pay off programs are presently not included in long-term planning and, when they do occur, actually take away funds from a unit's regular operational budget. The result is that the United States sometimes misses opportunities to build partnerships and trust. The Obama administration will expand such programs, regularizing them into the annual budget so that our efforts to aid allies, and win hearts and minds along the way, are sustainable, rather than ad-hoc."

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"End the abuse of the supplemental budgets, where much of the money has been lost, by creating system
of oversight for war funds as stringent as in the regular budget."

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"Restore the government's ability to manage contracts, by rebuilding our contract officer corps."

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Through the "Transparency and Integrity in Earmarks Act, will shed light on all earmarks by disclosing the name of the legislator who asked for each earmark, along with a written justification, 72 hours before they can be approved by the full Senate."

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"Will maintain fiscal responsibility and prevent any increase in the deficit by offsetting cuts and revenue sources in other parts of the government (to pay for a national service plan will cost about $3.5 billion per year when it is fully implemented). This plan will be paid for in part by cancelling tax provisions that would otherwise help multinational corporations pay less in U.S. taxes starting in 2008 by reallocating tax deductions for interest expenses between income earned in the U.S. and income earned abroad. The rest of the plan will be funded using a small portion of the savings associated with ending the war in Iraq."

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"Barack Obama is committed to returning earmarks to less than $7.8 billion a year, the level they were at before 1994."

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"Barack Obama will reform federal contracting and reduce the number of contractors, saving $40 billion a year."

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"And, absolutely, we need earmark reform. And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely."

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