OPINION:
If there’s one thing politicians are good it, it’s avoiding hard choices. The new Republican majority in the House appears - at least for the moment - not to be an exception. Despite having a clear mandate to make deep cuts in the current budget, the House proposed a mere $4 billion in pain-free reductions while putting off the question of a government shutdown for another two weeks. The timid approach met with overwhelming 91-9 approval in the Senate yesterday and a 335-91 vote in the House on Tuesday.
President Obama will have no problem signing this continuing resolution (CR) into law because it keeps the government open until March 18 while zeroing out programs the White House already had targeted for elimination. Coming up with $4 billion in savings every two weeks would add up to the $100 billion Republicans pledged to cut, but the public expects more.
A Rasmussen Reports poll released Tuesday suggested 53 percent of likely voters believe the GOP plan to be insufficient. Another 58 percent have no problem with a shutdown of the non-essential functions of government to get the job done right.
Nobody is going to lose sleep over the loss of $2.7 billion in earmarked pork projects made in the current CR. Of the $1.2 billion in programs closed, $680 million comes in the form of one-time hits that provide no long-term budget savings. For instance, the Smithsonian Institution will not receive $30 million to renovate a building - funds that weren’t needed because the money was already raised from private donors. Another $650 million in transportation spending that was never part of the president’s budget will also be dropped.
Among the canceled programs, the Election Assistance Commission will lose $75 million it would have doled out to states for electronic voting machines that states don’t want to buy. The Agriculture Department loses $29 million in broadband subsidies, but only because the same handouts are available from other departments.
The rest of the cuts come from Education Department programs like Even Start, which the Office of Management and Budget noted has been a failure because, “None of the studies showed that Even Start children and parents showed greater educational gains than those not receiving Even Start services.” The $88 million Smaller Learning Communities program that promotes reduced classroom sizes will go away years after the private sector abandoned similar efforts. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation spent $1 billion only to conclude that this approach “does not work.”
House Republicans deserve credit for holding more than 60 hours of open debate on their longer-term solution that reduces current government funding levels by $58.6 billion. It’s a baby step in the right direction. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the government will borrow $1,480 billion from future generations to pay for today’s spending. The long-term CR represents only a 4 percent reduction.
Republican governors like New Jersey’s Chris Christie, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Michigan’s Rick Snyder have shown that it’s possible to do more. Each has been pilloried by union thugs for their attempts to achieve entitlement reform that will pay off with real savings. Their ongoing success ought to inspire the congressional leadership to take the bolder leap needed to bring the federal budget back into balance.
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