Spending Cuts
Now that the GOP has some significant influence in Congress, suggestions are coming out as to what spending cuts can be made. Chris Edwards at the Cato Institute, for one, has a list of budget proposals that involve significant spending reductions:
Newcomers to Congress can find a wealth of budget-cutting ideas in recent plans by various D.C. think tanks:
- At the Heritage Foundation, Brian Riedl has come up with $343 billion in proposed annual cuts.
- At the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Bill Galston and Maya MacGuineas have proposed $400 billion in annual cuts.
- Esquire magazine assembled four former senators who came up with $476 billion in annual cuts.
- The National Taxpayers Union teamed up with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group to propose $600 billion of cuts over five years.
- Michael Ettlinger and Michael Linden of the Center for American Progress offer one plan that would cut annual spending by $255 billion.
Cato’s website, www.downsizinggovernment.org, also provides a treasure trove of spending cuts, and I will be publishing a detailed budget-reform plan in coming days.
Some of the above budget plans include tax increases, but voters gave a resounding message yesterday that they want Congress to focus on cutting spending, not raising taxes.
Chris Preble at Cato and Peter Suderman at Reason also suggest an area of the budget ripe for cuts: defense spending. While the defense budget is often regarded as off-limits, I can see some compelling reasons for trimming it as well as everything else.
