Argentinian President Javier Milei has done something truly astounding — something American politicians have universally failed to do. He delivered on a campaign promise to cut deficits and created a surplus in Argentina for the first time in 12 years. It only took him a few weeks from his inauguration to pull that feat off.
It’s time for House Republicans to demonstrate that kind of resolve by using the tools we already gave ourselves to cut spending. In law, we currently hold the golden ticket — automatic caps that will cut the woke, weaponized federal bureaucracy by $73 billion, nearly 10%, while leaving defense spending and veterans’ benefits untouched.
Because of the January 2023 speaker agreement and hard work, Republicans came together to pass the Limit, Save, Grow Act — a deficit reduction bill that would have capped discretionary spending at 2022 levels, $1.471 trillion, for fiscal 2024 and constrained future growth. LSG ultimately gave way to the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act — a debt limit “deal” that passed with Republican and Democratic majorities and was signed into law by President Joe Biden.
While far from perfect and well short of what Republicans should have held out for, the FRA did, in fact, set two years of caps designed to constrain spending — beginning with a modest 1% year-over-year spending cut under a cap of $1.590 trillion in fiscal 2024. Unfortunately, its negotiations included secret “side deals” to use budget gimmicks to increase non-defense spending by $69 billion beyond the caps.
However, it is important to note that House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) voted against the FRA because the “side deals” were not written into law, something she testified to me in the House Rules Committee. Indeed, many Republicans who supported the FRA were unaware of the side deals and are rightly frustrated — as they were not included in House-passed appropriations bills.
Yet, after Senate Democrats refused to take up any House-passed appropriations bills, congressional “leadership” agreed to embrace side-deal spending in closed-door negotiations. Moreover, it is almost certain that none of the hundreds of policies we secured during the House appropriations process, cutting funding for radical policies such as transgender surgeries and defense “diversity” training, will be adopted.
Thus, Republicans are on track to cave to radical progressive Democrats and increase discretionary spending by $30 billion over the levels set by Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) lame-duck fiscal 2023 omnibus without significant policy victories.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can still deliver on our promise to the public and cut spending by simply leveraging the existing, bipartisan FRA caps. All we have to do is pass a full-year continuing resolution at current funding levels through Sept. 30.
As I pointed out in a recent memo, and echoed by the Congressional Budget Office, under the FRA, a full-year CR would have to comply with the $1.59 trillion discretionary spending cap for fiscal 2024 — with a $886 billion defense and $704 billion non-defense spending cap.
Under this plan, neither defense spending nor veterans spending would be reduced by one penny — current defense levels comply with the cap, and veterans’ spending is exempt from the sequester. However, non-defense spending would breach the FRA caps by $73 billion, meaning a roughly 10% cut from $777 billion to $704 billion. In short, a CR that complies with the FRA would result in about $1.564 trillion in discretionary spending for fiscal 2024 — about $100 billion below the “deal” being discussed.
Most importantly, the cuts would be focused on the spending behind Biden’s war on the liberty, prosperity, and security of the people. That would get us around the low likelihood of getting Democrats to support policy riders in individual appropriations bills.
This is not theoretical — it is text in an enacted bipartisan law. Despite my misgivings about the FRA, mostly from the concerns about caps being too modest and the likelihood of gimmicks, the caps we got in place were the result of the hard work Republicans put in last year, beginning with LSG.
We should not let that go to waste.
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Most importantly, this plan would mean a real, measurable policy win. If we throw that work away, we will not only have wasted our own time and efforts, but we will also have walked away from the people we are supposed to be fighting for. If we fail to use the tools at our disposal to get this done, why would people believe us about cutting spending in the future?
Our reckless spending is bankrupting our country and fueling a weaponized government at war with our way of life. Milei has proven it can be done. House Republicans may not be able to pull off something that drastic, badly needed as it is, but it is past time for us to put up or shut up.