By , ,
Published May 06, 2015
This session of Congress will be a contentious; Republicans need to walk a tightrope reinventing their image as a party that can govern while appeasing their base. Certainly no major entitlement reform will come out of this congress and be signed by the president—that’s a bridge too far.
A place Republicans can make serious inroads though is with President Obama’s $4 trillion dollar budget. As Budget Chairman Rep. Tom Price and House Republicans are going through their committee hearings and markups of the budget they can easily find ways to cut spending without shutting down the government.
Republicans could cut appromixately $50 billion from the budget. Obviously, not enough to get the country back in the black, but a cut nonetheless that could show conservatives the Republican Party is sticking to their principles about smaller government.
Rather than trying to close government departments, alter or end ObamaCare, or any other legislation that could trigger a government shutdown. Smaller measures that reign in both big government and big spending could go by hardly being noticed.
Republicans could cut appromixately $50 billion from the budget. Obviously, not enough to get the country back in the black, but a cut nonetheless that could show conservatives the Republican Party is sticking to their principles about smaller government.
Republicans could cut approximately $50 billion from the budget. Obviously, not enough to get the country back in the black, but a cut nonetheless that could show conservatives the Republican Party is sticking to their principles about smaller government.
So while Republicans are busy approving the Key Stone Pipeline and trying to reform the tax code, they might consider the following items in order to reduce spending:
The text of the legislation states that NTIS, which has an approximate budget of forty-five million dollars in 2015, was created in 1950 and is “ tasked with collecting and distributing government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business-related information and reports.” In November 2012 the Government Accountability Office found that 95% of these reports are available free online from multiple sources, most notably Google.
The NTIS doesn’t create these reports, it only stores and sells them, but because of technology it has rendered their function useless. Score another one for the free market.
This piece of legislation is extremely important as the Disability Insurance trust fund is set to go bankrupt in 2016. In 2010, one hundred and seventeen thousand individuals received $850 million by double dipping in both programs.
The tax credits come in two forms, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC). These tax breaks are worrisome for several reasons, most notably they benefit illegal aliens who have broken into the country, do not pay income tax, and the IRS does not verify the existence of children or eligibility. The inspector general claims that both programs have made “improper payments” to nearly a quarter of EITC beneficiaries and as much as thirty percent of ACTC beneficiaries.
For example, according to USA Today, the Department of Health and Human Services has ten different offices to run duplicate programs addressing AIDS in minority communities and The Department of Defense of Defense has eight different agencies looking for prisoners of war and missing in action.
Cutting government spending isn’t as terrifying as liberals claim it is but it isn’t as easy as some on the right make it out to be. Certainly, if Republicans want to regain the Oval Office and prove to their base they’re serious and principled, they must start somewhere and sometimes you can cut government spending without having to threaten shutting the government down.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/republicans-could-cut-50-billion-from-budget-and-not-shut-down-the-government