I am pleased that you could all join us today as I sign this bill -- the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act -- which, translated into English, means cutting down on waste, fraud and abuse, and ensuring that our government serves as a responsible steward for the tax dollars of the American people.
This is a responsibility we've been working to fulfill from the very beginning of this administration. Back when I first started campaigning for office, I said I wanted to change the way Washington works so that it works for the American people. I meant making government more open and more transparent and more responsive to the needs of the people. I meant getting rid of the waste and inefficiencies that squander the people's hard-earned money. And I meant finally revamping the systems that undermine our efficiency and threaten our security and fail to serve the interests of the American people.
This isn't just about lines on a spreadsheet or numbers in a budget, because when we fail to spend people's tax dollars wisely, that's money that we're not investing in better schools for our kids, or tax relief for families, or innovation to create new industries and new jobs. When government doesn't work like it should, it has a real effect on people's lives -- on small business owners who need loans, on young people who want to go to college, on the men and women who've served this country and are trying to get the benefits that they've earned.
We began by combining -- by going through the budget line by line and proposing $20 billion worth of cuts each year by targeting programs that are wasteful, duplicative or, in some cases, just plain ridiculous, like the $35 million we're spending for a radio navigation system for ships. Since we now have this thing called GPS, we don't need it. Or the $3 million that was spent on consultants to create seals and logos for the Department of Homeland Security. Their logos and seals are fine, Or the billions of dollars slated to be spent on a fancy new presidential helicopter fleet that I didn't want and didn't need because Marine One is also fine.
We've drafted a budget for next year that freezes all discretionary government spending outside of national security for three years, a budget, by the way, that would reduce this spending -- non-defense discretionary spending -- to its lowest level as a share of the economy in 50 years. This isn't talked about a lot so I'm going to repeat it. Our budget would take non-security defense -- or non-defense spending to its lowest level since JFK -- lowest level as a percentage of the economy since JFK.
We're creating a single electronic medical record for our men and women in uniform that will follow them from the day they enlist until the day that they are laid to rest. We're revamping our Social Security and citizenship processes so that folks can book appointments and check the status of their applications online. We've created mobile apps that provide everything from disaster assistance to product safety information to the latest wait times for security lines at your local airport.
And we've begun an unprecedented effort to put an end to a problem known as improper payments, which is the purpose of the bill that I'm signing into law today. Now, these are payments sent by the government to the wrong person, or for the wrong reasons, or in the wrong amount. Payments to a defense contractor that's been disbarred for shoddy work but somehow managed to get through the system. Payments to companies that haven't paid their taxes, or to folks who are incarcerated -- or who are dead.
So this bill will dramatically expand and intensify our efforts to end improper payments. And going forward, every agency in our government will be required to conduct annual assessments to determine which of their programs are at risk of making improper payments. Agencies will be required to audit more of their programs and recapture more taxpayer dollars. And we now have rigorous enforcement mechanisms to hold agencies accountable for how much money they save.
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