Prime Cuts 2015: Bipartisan Proposals Included
After expanding control of the House of Representatives and taking over the Senate in the November 2014 elections, Republicans have a clear mandate to reduce spending.
The forthcoming Prime Cuts 2015 by Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), which was first published in 1993, contains 601 recommendations that would save taxpayers $639 billion in the first year and $2.6 trillion over five years. Since the organization’s inception in 1984, the implementation of CAGW’s recommendations has helped save taxpayers $1.4 trillion.
Prime Cuts has always been a resource for the House and Senate Budget Committees as they craft the annual budget resolution. While there is little doubt that a Republican-controlled Congress will produce such a document (unlike the last six years that Democrats controlled the Senate, save one), it is uncertain that many, if any Democrats will support that legislation.
Nonetheless, a good way to test Democrats’ interest in eliminating even the most obvious wasteful spending is to include in the fiscal year (FY) 2016 budget resolution a specific list of proposed spending reductions provided in President Obama’s proposed Terminations, Reductions, and Savings, a companion publication to his budgets that was rebranded Discretionary Cuts, Consolidations, and Savings in FY 2014.
Prime Cuts 2015 contains 144 such items that have yet to be enacted, saving taxpayers $21.2 billion in the first year and $129.3 billion over five years. These include eliminating the Denali Commission, the High Energy Cost Grant program, and grants for abstinence-only education programs.
These proposals would test the willingness of members of Congress to eliminate the low-hanging fruit in the federal budget. If President Obama thinks they are a bad idea (and some recommendations go back to prior Presidents) then certainly they should be embraced on a bipartisan basis.
Various members of Congress have also released plans to cut spending, many of which are included in Prime Cuts 2015. There are 99 recommendations from plans originating in Congress in Prime Cuts 2015, which, if enacted, would save taxpayers $352.6 billion in the first year and $542.9 billion over five years. These include proposals to eliminate federal subsidies for Amtrak and the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities from the Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) Spending Reduction Act of 2011, and ending the Davis-Bacon Act from the RSC’s 2011 Repeal Task Force.
The debate over where to locate savings that will inevitably occur during the budget battles of the 114th Congress will be highly politicized. Focusing initially on the recommendations that have been endorsed by the Obama administration is a common sense solution to bridge the partisan gap. Prime Cuts 2015 and congressional plans can serve as a blueprint to implement further cuts.
