The relentless conservative drive to dramatically cut federal spending — a campaign that nearly caused a government shutdown and helped topple House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — wouldn’t do much to significantly reduce the national debt anytime soon.
The push for drastic reductions in federal spending is expected to come up again once House Republicans pick a new speaker. They plan to start considering their choice this week, with no firm timetable for a final decision..
Whoever takes the gavel is expected to keep pushing for deep cuts. The Democratic-run Senate is unlikely to go along but the GOP effort matters as a message to constituents about what Republicans are seeking. That becomes particularly important if the party wins the presidency, retains a House majority and captures control of the Senate next year.
The GOP initiative is a reminder of why Congress is stuck on adopting a budget. When McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, agreed last month to a bipartisan plan to continue current spending for 45 days, angry conservatives plotted his successful removal.
The GOP budget plans range from sweeping to symbolic. For instance, aid that 702,000 Californians receive to buy healthy produce (through the Women’s, Infant and Children’s program WIC) would be dramatically cut. So would the federal tax credit for electric vehicle charge equipment.
On the more performative side, Republicans want to chop Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s $221,000 annual salary to $1.
While such reductions collectively would save billions, nonpartisan budget analysts maintain that the cuts barely address the broader question of how to significantly reduce the nation’s $33 trillion debt.
“They’re playing in much too small a sandbox’’ said former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat known for working with Republicans on fiscal matters.
The domestic spending cuts, he said, “aren’t where the problem is.”
Republican budget-cutters counter that their changes are a vital first step toward making the federal government more efficient and starting on a useful path to reducing the debt.
“Stop bleeding money, stop racking up debt, defend the United States, stop social engineering, and just do your damn job as Congress. I think that ought to be a pretty simple goal and a bipartisan goal,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas.
The federal budget had annual surpluses from fiscal 1998 to 2001, as a booming economy, a 1995 budget deal and a 1993 tax increase helped revenue pour into the Treasury. .
Since then, there have been nothing but annual deficits—$1.35 trillion in fiscal 2022—and the national debt has grown to $33 trillion. The deficit began climbing as Washington responded to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, pumping an estimated $2 trillion into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It spent to combat the Great Recession in 2009, delivered big tax cuts in 2017 and passed huge COVID aid packages in 2020 to 2022.
In fiscal 2022, the 12-month period that ended last September, the federal government spent $6.2 trillion. About two-thirds is called “mandatory spending,” meaning Congress does not have to vote on it. This includes Social Security benefits and Medicare payments.
That leaves about one-third that Congress can control annually. Roughly half is defense and the other half is domestic programs like education, transportation, energy and others
Most independent budget analysts agree that meaningful debt reduction has to involve costly entitlement spending. Social Security is estimated to be 11 years from insolvency. Medicare also faces financial problems in a few years.
