House Republican Budget Proposals Put Forth in the Most Haphazard
Manner Imaginable
The $44 billion that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is insisting we take out of
the domestic spending is "peanuts." With a $1.5 trillion deficit it
could be lost as a rounding error. But applied to only a selected
sliver of the entire budget it could do immense damage to critically
needed government infrastructure and services.
By Scott Lilly | February 9, 2011
Less than a week after the House Appropriations Committee sorted out
its final staff assignments, their new chairman, Rep. Hal Rogers (R-
KY), gave his subcommittees one week to find the $44 billion in cuts
in current year spending from the newly concocted category of
"nonsecurity discretionary spending." That category contains 12 of the
15 departments of the federal government but only one-eighth of total
federal spending. The cuts mandated by newly installed House Budget
Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will lower the annual
appropriations for programs in that category by 9.5 percent, but
because the fiscal year is nearly half gone the reduction in operating
levels will be closer to 19 percent for many programs. The
subcommittees have been directed to complete this reshaping of the
federal government by the end of this week, and the House is scheduled
to vote on the proposal next week.
Is there something wrong with this picture?
With many of the 93 freshmen members of the House still asking
rudimentary budget questions such as: "what is the difference between
an authorization and an appropriation?" or "how do outlays differ from
budget authority?" the time frame that Rep. Rogers and his leadership
are committed to means that not only will those voting on the proposal
have little opportunity to understand it but the authors themselves
will not have fully vetted or completely understood what they are
proposing. There have been no hearings, no requests for testimony, and
no opportunity even for staff charged with proposing the cuts to do
agency-by-agency analysis of the possible negative consequences.
Members will vote next week on the package without fundamental
knowledge of how major budget changes in literally thousands of
federal programs will impact the country in general or their own
constituents in particular.
In a previous column I offered an example of how such cuts might
affect one particular federal agency, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. The FBI, like most of federal law enforcement, is
curiously left out of the Republicans' other new category of
discretionary spending, "the security budget," which includes only the
Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security. As a
result most of federal law enforcement is subject to these cuts in the
same manner as Head Start or foreign aid.
The FBI is currently operating under the continuing resolution at its
fiscal year 2010 spending rate of $7.8 billion. When the legislation
is signed into law it is reasonable to assume that $3.9 billion, or
about half of the annual budget, will have been spent. If the 9.5
percent cut is applied equally to all "nonsecurity programs" it will
mean that the FBI will have about $3.2 billion to operate in the
second half of the year, or 81 percent of current levels.
But the problem gets even tougher. Many agencies in the federal
government are like the FBI in that nearly their entire annual budget
is made up of personnel costs. At the FBI 96 percent of the budget
goes to salaries and benefits for the agency's 33,000 employees. The
only way spending cuts more than a few percent can be absorbed is
through reductions in force—firing people.
The problem isn't that we can't fire FBI agents or other federal
employees but that we save very little money in the short run by doing
so. Over a six-month period, termination costs can easily be greater
than payroll savings. This problem exists not only in federal law
enforcement programs but also in regulatory bodies such as the
Securities and Exchange Commission, revenue collecting agencies such
as the Internal Revenue Service, benefit-monitoring organizations such
as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Administration, and other
relatively essential operations such as the Bureau of Prisons, the
Federal Aviation Administration, the Food Safety Inspection Service,
and so forth.
Many of these organizations might not be able to achieve a 19 percent
cut in spending within a six-month period even if they shut themselves
down entirely.
These may be extreme examples. And I am sure no one, including most
House Republicans, want to shut down the FBI or most of the other
agencies I have mentioned. But exempting agencies makes the proposed
cuts even more extreme for other programs. They include virtually all
that we invest in education, health care, science, and infrastructure.
Maybe a case can be made for cutting those investments, but this is
not the way to do it. This is a process that is guaranteed to produce
unintended consequences, and certainly more than a few will be highly
unpleasant.
Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY), the co-chair of President Barack
Obama's deficit commission, calls the proposal from Rep. Ryan
"peanuts." In an interview on CNN, Simpson argued that Congress's
failure to look at a broader portion of the budget would crush "all
the discretionary spending. It just wipes it out."
Simpson is right on both counts. The $44 billion that Rep. Ryan is
insisting we take out of domestic spending is "peanuts." With a $1.5
trillion deficit it could be lost as a rounding error. But applied to
only a selected sliver of the entire budget it could do immense damage
to critically needed government infrastructure and services.
Worst of all, House Republican are going down this dangerous road in
the most haphazard manner imaginable. They are using none of the
standard tools of the legislative process, such as extended staff
investigations, publication of proposed legislative changes in advance
of hearings, and request for public comment. The hearings that are
scheduled on the budgetary needs of these agencies will take place
after the House has voted.
This is a disgrace to the legislative process and a serious hazard to
the American people. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and his
House colleagues need to reject this approach and put forward an
alternative that insures we all understand what we are cutting and
what benefits and costs of those cuts will be.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/plain_nuts.html
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