By DAVID ROGERS | 2/3/11 11:49 AM EST Updating their budget estimates, House Republicans conceded Thursday that their best hope is to cut current appropriations by $32 billion for the remainder of this fiscal year, once new spending for defense and other security needs are added to the equation.
The impact on domestic spending and foreign aid programs would still be very severe, with the GOP seeking an immediate $58 billion cut from President Barack Obama’s once expansive 2011 budget. But with the Congressional Budget Office predicting a nearly $1.5 trillion deficit for the current year, the scaled-back estimates reflect the limits of a budget strategy so focused narrowly on one segment of appropriations.
As outlined by leadership and House Budget Committee staff, the new cap on appropriations will set a 2011 ceiling of $1.055 trillion—$32 billion less than the latest estimate by CBO of the full-year of the stop gap spending bill due to expire Mar. 4.
Most simply, domestic and foreign aid programs would be cut to $420 billion or about $40 billion below the levels now. But an additional $8 billion would be added for defense and security needs, even after making reductions from Obama’s Pentagon request.
Beginning next week, the House Appropriations Committee will use these numbers to begin writing its own continuing resolution to cover the last seven months of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. And the long term goal is still one of rolling back domestic spending to the fiscal 2008 levels set by the Bush Administration in its last year in office.
But getting there is proving more of an ordeal than the leadership had once hoped, and some further extension of the March 4th deadline is likely to be needed before any agreement is reached with the Democratic-controlled Senate or the White House.
The more immediate problem facing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) could be in his own conference, and Republicans find themselves caught in a rhetorical trap going back to their famous pledge to cut $100 billion from spending in their first year in office.
That number was always inflated since it used Obama’s 2011 budget as its benchmark, even after Democrats had proposed deep cuts to the president’s request as well. And Republicans put themselves in a box when they blocked a full year CR last fall—thereby putting the onus on them to deliver cuts faster than many in the GOP had been prepared to do.
That said, all signs indicate that the 2008 spending levels remain the long term target and on a pro-rata basis, the GOP can argue it is still on course.
The domestic and foreign aid spending cuts anticipated in the new continuing resolution would be about $58 billion before Obama’s 2011 request, for example, which aides said will translate roughly to $100 billion on a 12 month basis. And Boehner has always said that a second bite will come in the fiscal 2012 appropriations bills next summer and Republicans should be judged on their first 12 months in office—not the last seven of one fiscal year.
With Obama slated to soon roll out his new 2012 budget, the contrast will become sharper, and the depth of the GOP cuts and single-minded focus on domestic spending is sure to meet resistance from the White House and Democrats.
The administration has held firm thus far to its plan to freeze more domestic spending at the 2010 levels reflected in the stop gap. But variations of the same 2008 benchmark were also used by the presidential deficit commission last year and garnered bipartisan support then.
The big distinctions are that the commission allowed more time for the reductions, made some adjustment for inflation, and applied the cap to all discretionary spending including the military. Under this plan, appropriations would be capped in 2013 at the 2008 level—in real dollars—and then allowed to grow in the future by only half the rate of inflation.
Nonetheless, the savings would be substantial—$1.66 trillion over 10 years. And for all the emphasis on tax and entitlement reforms, the commission’s report rests more heavily on the appropriations process, which would account for more than half the real savings –apart from reduced interest on future deficits.
