In a classic
YouTube moment, an incredulous Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-VA)
recently grilled Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about the
growing federal budget deficit. How, the congressman inquired,
could this red ink ever be contained without tax increases?
Bernanke replied that, well, yes, it would be difficult but
Congress could cut spending.
Connolly seemed perplexed. “Is there enough spending to be cut?”
he asked. Now it was the Fed chairman’s turn to be incredulous as
he shot back, “Of course.” But the freshman Democrat could
perhaps be forgiven for being unable to contemplate spending
reductions of this magnitude. It has been a while since
Republicans, ostensibly members of the limited government party,
last offered any.
In fact, Republicans have made only three serious attempts to cut
federal spending in the postwar era: during the “Do Nothing”
Congress of 1947-48; the Congress that came in with Ronald Reagan
in 1981-82; and the Gingrich “Republican Revolution” Congress of
1995-96. Since Republicans are within striking distance of taking
back one or both houses this year, it worth asking what spending
a new GOP majority might try to cut.
The Gingrich Republicans gave clues as to what spending they
would attack before Newt himself got anywhere near the speaker’s
gavel. The first was procedural. Reps. Bill Zeliff (R-NH) and Rob
Andrews (D-NJ) proposed the A to Z spending cuts plan in 1993,
calling for a special session in which any member of Congress
could propose a reduction in expenditures — even for
entitlements — and get an up-or-down vote.
Reps. John Kasich (R-OH) and Tim Penny (D-MN) went a step further
by offering an actual list of spending to cut. With the Democrats
still firmly in control of Congress and the White House, they
cobbled together more than 90 specific cuts that initially
totaled $103 billion (subsequent compromises brought this figure
down to $90 billion).
Penny-Kasich privatized and eliminated some federal programs
while reforming others. It increased the federal civilian
retirement age from 55 to 65 and deferred cost-of-living
adjustments for military retirees younger than 62. It
means-tested Medicare, cut foreign aid, canceled a grenade
launcher, slashed 252,000 federal jobs, and increased the
Davis-Bacon threshold from $2,000 to $100,000 so that its
prevailing-wage requirements would balloon the costs of fewer
federal contracts.
And Penny-Kasich also scared the hell out of the Clinton
administration and the Democratic leadership, who pulled out all
the stops to defeat it — even though all these cuts would have
only reduced federal spending by 1 percent over five years. But
the Penny-Kasich amendment nearly passed, losing the House by
just 213 to 219. It helped give a Republican majority waiting to
be born a blueprint for some of its future budget cuts.
Right now, Republicans do have a longer-term plan to seriously
address federal spending in the form of Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI)
fiscal roadmap (although the GOP leadership hasn’t exactly
embraced Ryan’s handiwork). But they don’t have anything quite
like Penny-Kasich or A to Z to establish their initial
credibility as an anti-spending party, something very much in
doubt after the budget-busting Bush years.
If Republicans are looking for such a plan, they could do worse
than borrow a new A to Z list of spending cuts proposed by
Demian Brady of the National Taxpayers Union earlier this year.
His objective: “cleaning up after the stimulus,” a $787 billion
boondoggle that has yet to stimulate in any meaningful sense.
Brady offers an alphabetical listing of the spending that could
be cut under the rules envisioned by Zeliff and Andrews during
the 1990s.
Some of the savings are small in the context of a $3.55 trillion
federal budget: getting rid of $7 million in helium resources
management, ending mohair subsidies to the tune of $8 million,
and terminating $10 million in grants for local government
anti-climate changes initiatives, for example. Others, like
repealing the remaining stimulus and ending the TARP bailout
program, are quite large cuts — and Brady’s plan was introduced
before the new health care law passed.
Republicans may not have Democrats like Tim Penny to work with
anymore on cutting spending. The current crop of Blue Dogs were
largely neutered during the health care debate. Democrats such as
Connolly appear to believe spending cuts are a mythical creature
like the Loch Ness Monster.
But if the GOP is to retake the majority and do something more
worthwhile than reenter the earmarks racket, the party would do
well to discover new John Kasichs to offer specific spending
reductions now rather than later. They should be able to tell the
voters that when the federal budget is this massive, finding room
to cut should be as easy as reciting the alphabet from A to Z.
