by Brian Riedl
Abstract : Federal spending is on an unsustainable path that risks disaster for America. Runaway spending has increased annual federal budget deficits to unprecedented levels, adding $2.7 trillion to the national debt in the past two years alone. Each year’s huge federal deficit increases the mountain of national debt borrowed from future generations of Americans. Congress needs to cut federal spending sharply and quickly. This paper sets forth $343 billion in available spending cuts.
Over the past two years, Congress has added $2.7 trillion to the national debt, including a record $1.4 trillion deficit for fiscal year (FY) 2009 and a $1.3 trillion deficit for FY 2010.[1] If Congress does nothing and simply continues existing taxing and spending policies, federal deficits will grow, reaching a projected $2 trillion deficit in just 10 years—and even that assumes a return to peace and prosperity.[2]
America cannot live with such deficits interminably. Deficits mortgage the livelihoods of future generations of Americans and ultimately put U.S. economic growth, stability, and reliability at risk.
Soaring spending drives these dangerous deficits. By 2020, federal spending is set to soar to 26 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), after having averaged 20 percent after World War II. Revenues will likely return to their post–World War II average of 18 percent of GDP by 2020, even if the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are made permanent.[3] Thus, given current spending and taxing policies, spending is clearly the variable that drives up the deficits.[4] To reduce deficits, Congress must cut spending.
The costs of federal entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—and interest on the national debt will drive future deficits, and Congress must promptly and carefully decide how best to reduce those costs. However, entitlement reforms will take time, and spending cuts cannot wait. Congress needs to start cutting spending now.
Table 1 sets forth $343 billion in available spending cuts for the new Congress to consider when it takes up the federal budget for FY 2012. Many of the cuts fall into six areas:
Empowering state and local governments. Congress should focus the federal government on performing a few duties well and allow the state and local governments, which are closer to the people, to creatively address local needs in areas such as transportation, justice, job training, and economic development.
Consolidating duplicative programs. Past Congresses have repeatedly piled duplicative programs on top of preexisting programs, increasing administrative costs and creating a bureaucratic maze that confuses people seeking assistance.
Privatization. Many current government functions could be performed more efficiently by the private sector.
Targeting programs more precisely. Corporate welfare programs benefit those who do not need assistance in the American free enterprise system. Other programs often fail to enforce their own eligibility requirements.
Eliminating outdated and ineffective programs. Congress often allows the federal government to run the same programs for decades, despite many studies showing their ineffectiveness.
Eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. Taxpayers will never trust the federal government to reform major entitlements if they believe that the savings will go toward “bridges to nowhere,” vacant government buildings, and Grateful Dead archives.[5]
Table 1: Spending Cuts for FY 2012
(in millions of dollars)
Agriculture
$15,000
Replace farm subsidies with Farmer Savings Accounts and improved crop insurance.
$2,033
Eliminate the Foreign Agriculture Service.
$1,500
Merge all four agriculture outreach and research agencies and cut their budget in half.
$1,000
Fund the Food Safety and Inspection Service with user fees.
Commerce
$500
Eliminate business subsidies from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Community Development
$6,000
Eliminate the Community Development Block Grant program.
$598
Eliminate the Rural Utilities Service.
$523
Eliminate the Economic Development Administration.
$480
Eliminate NeighborWorks America (formerly the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation).
$200
Consolidate the Rural Housing and Development Programs and convert them into block grants.
$73
Eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission.
$48
Eliminate the Denali Commission.
$31
Eliminate the Minority Development Business Agency.
$8
Eliminate the Delta Regional Authority.
Education
$8,000
Return Pell Grants to their 2009 funding level of $24 billion, which is still double the 2007 level.
$2,000
Trim Head Start by $2 billion and convert it into vouchers.
$2,000
Scale back the Education Department bureaucracy.
$1,500
Eliminate dozens of small and duplicative education grants.
$298
Eliminate state grants for Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities.
Energy and the Environment
$6,500
Reduce energy subsidies for commercialization and some research activities.
$600
Block grant and devolve Environmental Protection Agency grant programs.
$200
Restructure the Power Marketing Administrations to charge market-based rates.
$63
Eliminate the Science to Achieve Results Program.
Government Reform
$44,000
Halve federal program payment errors by 2012, especially by reducing Medicare errors and earned income tax credit errors.
Tighten oversight by spending $5 billion on new resources, such as updated computer systems, and then recover $49 billion in payment errors.
$20,000
Rescind unobligated balances after 36 months.
$12,500
Halve the $25 billion spent to maintain vacant federal properties.
$10,000
Cut the federal employee travel budget to $4 billion (half of FY 2000 spending).
$3,000
Freeze federal pay until it can be reformed.
$1,000
Suspend acquisition of federal office space.
$600
Trim the federal vehicle fleet by 20 percent (a reduction of 100,000 vehicles).
$300
Cut the House and Senate budgets back to the 2008 level of $2.2 billion.
$215
Eliminate the Presidential Election Campaign Fund.
$100
Tighten controls on federal employee credit cards and cut down on delinquencies.
$70
Require federal employees to fly coach on domestic flights.
Health Care
$6,200
Reform Medigap.
$5,000
Repeal Obamacare (larger savings in later years).
$3,700
Require Medicare home health co-payments.
$673
Eliminate the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant.
$414
Eliminate Health Professions grants.
$327
Eliminate Title X Family Planning.
$150
Eliminate the National Health Service Corps.
$98
Repeal Rural Health Outreach and Flexibility grants.
Homeland Security
$2,700
Eliminate most homeland security grants to states and allow states to finance their own programs.
Income Security
$500
Better enforce eligibility requirements for food stamps.
Interior
$1,500
Open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to leasing.
(The savings are leasing revenues, which are classified as negative spending in the federal budget.)
$200
Suspend federal land purchases.
International
$2,636
Eliminate the Development Assistance Program.
$625
Eliminate the State Department’s education and cultural exchange programs.
$321
Eliminate the International Trade Administration’s trade promotion activities or charge the beneficiaries.
$183
Eliminate the Democracy Fund.
$68
Eliminate the International Trade Commission and transfer oversight of intellectual property rights to the Treasury Department.
$56
Eliminate the Trade and Development Agency.
$29
Eliminate the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
$19
Eliminate the East–West Center.
$17
Eliminate the United States Institute of Peace.
$2
Eliminate the Japan–United States Friendship Commission.
Justice
$7,334
Eliminate all Justice Department grants except those from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Institute of Justice,
thereby empowering states to finance their own justice programs.
$398
Eliminate the Legal Services Corporation.
$32
Eliminate the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service.
$30
Eliminate the duplicative Office of National Drug Control Policy.
$26
Reduce funding for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by 20 percent
because of its policy against race-neutral enforcement of the law.
$4
Eliminate the State Justice Institute.
Labor
$4,300
Eliminate failed federal job training programs.
$2,000
Eliminate the ineffective Job Corps.
$576
Eliminate the Senior Community Service Employment Program.
National Science Foundation
$1,700
Reduce National Science Foundation funding to 2008 levels.
$86
Eliminate National Science Foundation spending on elementary and secondary education.
Transportation
$45,000
Devolve the federal highway program and most transit spending to the states.
$1,900
Privatize Amtrak.
$1,009
Eliminate grants to large and medium-sized hub airports.
$554
Eliminate the Maritime Administration.
$125
Eliminate the Essential Air Service Program.
Treasury
$26,646
Eliminate the additional child refundable credit.
$103
Eliminate the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.
Veterans
$2,500
Cap increases in Department of Veterans Affairs health care spending.
$1,930
Reduce Veterans’ Disability Compensation to account for Social Security Disability Insurance payments.
Cross-Agency and Other
$60,000
Repeal unspent stimulus spending.
$8,000
Switch to using the “Superlative CPI” in funding calculations.
$6,000
Repeal the Davis–Bacon Act.
$2,250
Eliminate Federal Communications Commission funding for school Internet service.
$2,000
Ban project labor agreements on all federally funded construction projects.
$1,000
Eliminate the Small Business Administration, which unnecessarily intervenes in free markets.
$736
Eliminate the National Community Service programs, such as AmeriCorps.
$253
Eliminate the Institute of Museum Services and Library Services.
$140
Eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities.
$133
Eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts.
$61
Eliminate Army Corps of Engineers funding for beach replenishment projects.
$10
Eliminate the Commission of Fine Arts.
$8
Eliminate the National Capital Planning Commission.
$5
Eliminate the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
Total
$343,207 million
Implementing the $343 billion in recommended cuts listed in Table 1 would reduce the deficit by somewhat less than $343 billion because some recommendations would also reduce tax revenues. For example, devolving the federal highway program to states would also mean devolving the gas tax, and repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)[6] would repeal its tax increases.
Conclusion
Almost all of the proposed cuts in federal spending will provoke strong objections from constituencies that benefit from having Members of Congress give them taxpayer money taken from someone else. Yet the difficulties caused by each of these cuts should be measured against the status quo option of doubling the national debt over the next decade, risking an economic crisis, and drowning future generations in taxes.
Governing involves difficult choices, and Congress simply cannot continue to court long-term disaster for all merely to avoid short-term difficulties for some.
—Brian M. Riedl is Grover M. Hermann Research Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Appendix
Additional Reading on Spending Recommendations
1. Congressional Budget Office, Budget Options, Vol. 1, Health Care, December 2008, at http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=9925 (October 19, 2010).
2. Congressional Budget Office, Budget Options, Vol. 2, August 2009, at http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=10294 (October 19, 2010).
3. Brian M. Riedl, “50 Examples of Government Waste,” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2642, October 6, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/10/50-Examples-of-Government-Waste.
4. Republican Study Committee, “A Balanced Budget for America,” May 2010, at http://rsc.tomprice.house.gov/UploadedFiles/RSC_FY11_BUDGET_BOOKLET—FINAL.pdf (October 19, 2010).
5. Paul Weinstein Jr. and Katie McMinn Campbell, “Return to Fiscal Responsibility II,” Progressive Policy Institute Policy Report, April 2007, at http://www.ppionline.org/documents/Fiscal_Responsibility_04302007.pdf (October 19, 2010).
6. Scott A. Hodge, ed., Balancing America’s Budget (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 1997).
7. Brian M. Riedl, “How to Get Federal Spending Under Control,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1733, March 10, 2004, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2004/03/How-to-Get-Federal-Spending-Under-Control.
8. David B. Muhlhausen, “Why Would COPS 2.0 Succeed When COPS 1.0 Failed?” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 1903, April 28, 2008, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2008/04/Why-Would-COPS-20-Succeed-When-COPS-10-Failed.
9. David B. Muhlhausen, “Congress Spends Billions on Ineffective Job-Training Programs,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1597, October 1, 2002, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2002/10/Congress-Spends-Billions-on-Ineffective-Job-Training-Programs.
10. Robert E. Moffit, “The Prospects for Ending Obamacare: Learning from Health Policy History,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2424, June 21, 2010, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/06/The-Prospects-for-Ending-Obamacare-Learning-from-Health-Policy-History.
11. Matt A. Mayer, “An Analysis of Federal, State, and Local Homeland Security Budgets,” Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report No. CDA09–01, March 9, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/03/An-Analysis-of-Federal-State-and-Local-Homeland-Security-Budgets.
12. Ronald Utt, “Will a Bigger Role for States Improve Transportation Policy Performance?” in Wendell Cox, Alan Pisarski, and Ronald D. Utt, eds., 21st Century Highways (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 2005).
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