The Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative GOP lawmakers, today released their version of the 2007 federal budget, titled "Contract with America: Renewed."
Their budget would cut the deficit by $358 billion over five years, compared with $60 billion in Bush's budget. But as you might imagine, the devil is in the details. Their proposal is a mixture of solid ideas and conservative wet dreams.
NEUTRAL IDEAS
Increase defense spending to match Bush's request for 2007. Defense spending shouldn't be sacrosanct, but adequate funding is a must.
Eliminate the Mars initiative and the space shuttle program. The Mars program is great, but not the way it's being funded: by gutting everything else NASA does. If the Mars mission doesn't come with extra money, it should die. The space shuttle needs to be retired, but we should have its replacement in hand before that happens.
BAD IDEAS
Gut foreign aid. This is insane. The war on terror demands more foreign aid spending, not less.
Dept. of Energy. Eliminate federal funding for energy conservation research, and arbitrarily cut the department's size by 35 percent. In an era of high oil prices and searches for alternatives, this makes little sense.
Interior and Agriculture. Arbitrarily cut the size of the Depts. of Interior and Agriculture by 10 percent and impose a wide variety of cuts in environment and natural resource programs, including eliminating the Energy Star program (that logo that lets you know if you're buying an energy-efficient appliance).
Transportation. Eliminate Amtrak and mass transit subsidies and transfer a whole bunch of responsibilities to the states, including railroad safety and regulation and (the biggie) highway construction spending. Eliminate the subsidies that maintain the U.S. merchant marine. Privatize the FAA... Dumping funding on the states merely shifts responsibilities. Maintaining the merchant marine is a security issue. Privatizing the FAA would harm its regulatory function.
Deep cuts in education spending. Eliminate the Reading Is Fundamental program and programs to encourage learning a second language — this at a time when a shortage of foreign-language speakers is hampering our security efforts. Freeze spending for Head Start. Eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities and cut the Dept. of Education by 30 percent.
Health. Cut National Institute of Health budget by 10 percent, eliminate family planning programs and turn Medicaid and SCHIP into a block-grant program — cutting $36 billion a year from it in the process, largely by capping spending increases without regard to actual need.
Article comments
1 - Dave Nalle
Fascinating stuff, Sean. I have a sinking feeling that no one in Washington is going to pay any attention to this at all, but I sure wish they would.
IMO some of these cuts are way too mild. I bet they aren't cutting nearly enough from farm subsidies. And I'm with you that energy is one area where cuts aren't at all sensible.
Dave
2 - Sean Aqui
The RSC made a mistake by including so many conservative pet peeves on the cut list. That makes it too easy to dismiss the entire document as a meaningless political exercise. If they were seriously interested in budget reform they would have taken a hard look at defense, proposed at least modest Social Security changes, and focused the rest on demonstrably wasteful programs and demonstrably virtuous reforms. I know conservatives hate the NEA and the Education Dept., but they should have left the culture wars out of this.
3 - Dave Nalle
Yeah, I was surprised you didn't find something more substantive on Social Security reform. I'd be as happy as anyone to see the NEA go away. It really serves no useful function. But the cust you point out in housing assistance and healthcare seem unnecessary and purely ideological to me.
Dave
4 - Sam Jack
"Eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities and cut the Dept. of Education by 30 percent."
It would be a shame to eliminate CPB, NEA, and NEH just because the Republicans don't like the kind of things those groups say and do.
5 - Sean Aqui
Yep. It's one thing to have a principled debate over what the proper role of government is. But eliminating a program simply out of personal animosity isn't good policy.
6 - Dave Nalle
CPB could function on its own with minor changes. They already get 94% of their funding from licensing, advertising and viewer donations.
Dave