American businesses are constantly reviewing plans to keep their dreams alive. Owners and managers worry about how much they can get back for every dollar they spend investing in their business or providing goods or services for customers. But our federal government seems to think differently.

Our federal deficit continues to grow, and now our country is over $16 trillion in debt. Our politicians in Washington, on both sides of the aisle, are unable to come to any agreement on how to stop even unnecessary programs, to help reduce our mounting deficit. Each side wants different programs retained or eliminated.

Few elected officials are willing to sign on to cuts in programs they want, in order to get a compromise deal for reductions. So we are likely to see across-the-board cuts, so no official who was elected in the hope that he or she would make good decisions, has to make any. Instead, good programs will be cut and wasteful or pork barrel programs will not be eliminated, just cut back.

Spending on federally funded programs have to be cut dramatically, especially where programs are outdated, unnecessary or offer no accountability. Some programs just waste taxpayers’ money. Our elected officials in Congress and the administration should have the backbone to question whether specific federal programs are really needed and dramatically cut back or entirely eliminate those that don’t deliver what they promised.

Right now, the government is spending more than it generates in revenues. We need proper checks and balances on federal programs, so that we can tell whether the taxpayer’s money is getting a positive return, or whether something should be discontinued. Government can’t keep spending money it doesn’t have, for programs that aren’t successful in meeting their goals.

Many special programs and projects should have a sunset clause that eliminates them after three or five years, unless a majority of members of Congress re-vote to sustain them, specifically ”“ not as part of an omnibus package, which buries the details.

Taxpayers need to be told the truth about when, why and to whom a grant is given, whether for a well-intentioned program or otherwise, to determine if federal monies have been spent wisely or wastefully. One thing both sides ought to be able to agree on is the elimination of waste.

One example of an unsuccessful program, funded during President Obama’s first term, was a $5 billion expenditure, allotted through federally funded Green Energy Initiative, to have car manufacturers produce one million electric cars by 2015. So far, about 31,000 electric battery operated cars were produced in 2012. Their high sale price and lack of interest from the buying public kept them from being successful in the marketplace.

In recent years, the Social Security Administration mistakenly paid nearly $100 million to dead people, by using outdated mailing lists, according to the Social Security inspector general’s report. The ongoing problem has not been fully corrected.

Another example of wasted money by the federal government is the $550 million grant given to Solyndra, the solar panel manufacturing company that went bankrupt after receiving government funds.

Billions of taxpayer dollars continue to be spent on wasteful pet projects that benefited constituents of politicians, in return for political support in the form of votes. And some non-political uses of federal dollars raise questions, too, such as a $325,000 grant by the National Science Foundation to develop a robotic squirrel, to test how squirrels and rattlesnakes interact, according to a report issued by the office of Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.

Another example of wasteful spending is how the government spends money on its own personnel. In 2008 and 2009 alone, the Department of Justice spent $121 million to host or participate in 1,832 conferences. Some of these conferences may have been important and of some value, but anyone who has ever gone to federal conferences knows that a lot of people who are not essential still get time off to attend those events and have their expenses paid. Guess who pays for this: We do, through our tax dollars.

There is a wonderful old saying, “Waste not, want not.” In order to reduce our deficit, we have to eliminate waste, by getting rid of unnecessary programs and carefully monitoring the expenses of even good programs.

We face dire consequences, if we don’t.

— Bernard Featherman is a business columnist for the Journal Tribune and former president of the Biddeford-Saco Chamber of Commerce.