(Washington, D.C.) – Today, on Groundhog Day, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) calls for Congress to stop hiding from its own shadow and show the American people that it has commonsense solutions to our spending problems.  Taxpayers have suffered through the same nauseatingly familiar scene of spending on top of more spending for far too long. 

Disappointingly, during President Obama’s State of the Union address he said that he will cap, rather than cut, non-defense discretionary spending for five years.  Such spending has increased by 23 percent since 2008, and the national debt has increased by $3 trillion over the last two years.  Federal spending passed 25 percent of GDP last year, its highest level since World War II.  Freezing spending at current levels will merely institutionalize a budget that has grown dramatically larger over the last two years.  The status quo is insufficient, and the problem is spending. 

Sensible solutions can be found in CAGW’s Prime Cuts Database, which includes 763 waste-cutting recommendations that would save taxpayers $350 billion in the first year and $2.2 trillion over five years.   

 “Our current path has iced out private investment, left unemployment frozen at more than nine percent, and raised the national debt to a gloomy $14.3 trillion,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.  “It is time for the Obama administration and Congress to make serious cuts that will brighten our fiscal future.”

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.