Top federal budget targets still ahead
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is urging Congress to look beyond discretionary spending for federal budget cuts. Credit: Charles Eckert
Congress needs to get real about federal spending.
The stage may be set for that now that the Senate has swept away a reckless House plan to slash $61 billion in domestic spending over the next seven months, and a timid Democratic alternative that would have cut $10 billion. Congress has little choice but to pass a continuing resolution to push the threat of government shutdown off for at least another few weeks. But shutdown brinksmanship is no way to do the public's business.
This is the time for Congress to broaden the debate to include defense and entitlement spending and eliminating some of the $1.1 trillion a year in deductions, credits and other breaks that make the federal tax code so difficult to comply with and to enforce. That's where the money is.
Democratic congressional leaders such as Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) are now pushing their colleagues to look at the big pot. So are Senate Republicans, who yesterday threatened to oppose raising the federal debt ceiling unless President Barack Obama promises to tackle entitlements.
Obama has been reluctant to go there. Voters get nervous when Washington talks tax reform. And while many cheer the abstraction of smaller government, when it comes to actually rolling back retirement benefits or medical care, voters are, unfortunately, likely to punish the messenger.
So most elected officials have been waiting for someone else to lead. And in the interim they've made a show of cuts that will cost jobs and risk slowing economic recovery without significantly reducing the deficit.
The House Republican majority's budget bill hacked away at the domestic, nonsecurity portion of the budget, which accounts for only 12 percent of federal spending. And it called for deep cuts in areas critical to the nation's economic competitiveness such as education, research, financial regulation and health care reform. It was more political manifesto than serious spending plan.
The Senate Democrats' modest proposal provided little convincing evidence that the party that failed to pass a budget at all last year, while in the majority, is ready now to embrace fiscal discipline.
The rejection of those flawed opening bids on spending cuts should mark an end to the political posturing and the beginning of a full-court budget debate.
Two of every three dollars the federal government spends go to the military and entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Until those items are on the table -- along with proposals to simplify the federal tax code and raise revenue -- talk of significant deficit reduction is just talk.
If we're going to have a row over spending, it should be the spending responsible for the gusher of red ink.
