Finally. Some balls:
In another victory for tea party rebels in Congress today, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., scrapped his original plan for spending cuts and announced that he will seek to cut $100 billion from what President Obama had requested for this fiscal year.
“My committee has been working diligently to go line-by-line in every agency budget to find and cut unnecessary spending to reduce our deficit and help our economy thrive,” Rogers said in a statement. “We have determined that the [continuing resolution] can and will reach a total of $100 billion in cuts compared to the president’s request immediately—fully meeting the goal outlined in the Republican ‘Pledge to America’ in one fell swoop.”
Rogers didn’t say what those cuts might be, a clear sign that House GOP leaders had been caught by surprise, which left appropriators scrambling to figure out how they would assuage their tea party critics on the right.
Late last night, GOP leaders added an additional $26 billion in nonsecurity cuts. So now there are $84 billion in non-discretionary cuts. There were previously $58 billion.
The rebellion began on Tuesday, when two Appropriations Republicans voted against a bill in committee that set overall spending caps in line with what House GOP leaders had been planning.
Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a new member of the committee, ridiculed Rogers’s spending caps and declared that it was too early to “award ourselves the ‘Profiles in Courage Award.’ ” He and Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., joined Democrats in voting against the caps.
The GOP troubles came to a head Wednesday morning, when Rogers gave a presentation on his bill to the House Republican Conference. Several members of the party’s right wing, including tea party freshmen looking to lay down a conservative marker, objected and demanded that the appropriators come up with a full $100 billion in reductions.
On Thursday, Rogers said he would and could go the full distance outlined in the ‘Pledge to America.’
“Our intent is to make deep but manageable cuts in nearly every area of government, leaving no stone unturned,” he said. “I have instructed my subcommittee chairs to include these deeper cuts, and we are continuing to work to complete this critical legislation,” Rogers said.
Leave aside the National Journal’s attempts to frame the cuts as coming from the far right — what’s happening here is that a few freshman have demanded the GOP honor its own pledge, after they predictably tried to walk it back to avoid drawing the ire of “moderates” and “independents” — this is a heartening development, and a sign that at least some of our new conservative House members took the November elections seriously.
Now is not the time to pull back. Cut while voters have shown you they have the will and the desire.
We don’t want compromise. Compromise has gotten us to where we are today.
The force is strong in these young ones…
The battle begins!
Feel free to use Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Flies, or any other analogies and metaphors that work for you.
Even ‘feets’ll be happy.
I’m glad to see that at least the freshmen representative got the voter’s message loud and clear, and are going to hold the leadership’s feet to the fire.
I’m doing my spending cut dance right now
You know what they say: a hundred billion here and a hundred billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
Another fourteen or so cuts like that and we’ll be balanced!
Bravo. Good start. Granted they are just reducing the deficit right now. Spending $1,400,000,000,000 more than you have is $100,000,000,000, but it is still $1,400,000,000,000 more than they have to start with. When that is balanced without gimmicks, I will be happy.
A word got eaten in there.
[…] lousy $100 Billion it is then… How pathetic that this is a victory. Just a reminder – federal spending is currently at about 3.4 TRILLION dollars. There are a […]
3%. It is a start, not so sure I would go so far as to say they have any balls yet.
Less than a thousandth of what we will come up with by one means or another. It’s a start.
Related:
Bh – apparently the Admin is scrambling to try to commit unspent dollars to projects to minimize the remaining unspent funds. That whole committed but not yet spent figure ….
Criminal. Just criminal.
I think committed but not yet spent will soon become the new created or saved. He’ll, even Bernacke talked of creating or saving jobs.
link
This is not what was promised and what they ran on – the promise was to return to pre-stimulus spending levels, NOT $100 million less than Obama’s crazy ass inflated budget number.
I think Mr.Sean Duffy should get a gold star and a $50 gift certificate to Starbucks for that suggestion. The people of Wisconsin are wise.
I think we should run them all out of town on rails for being feckless lying cowards. Who is with me? Smoke?
Let’s go !
$100 billion is less than a thousandth of some number bigger than $100 trillion. The federal government has just a tiny bit larger chance of running a surplus that big than I do. It’s still effectively zero, though.
Yeah, I’m with you, JD – if you’ve stopped bending over.