Think it’s time for Congress to make tough decisions about reining in federal government spending? Tell the people on Capitol Hill. Brian Faler reports in the latest Bloomberg Businessweek that members of Congress don’t seem to get the message.
At the end of this year the Bush-era tax cuts will expire, $1 trillion in automatic spending cuts will begin taking effect soon after, and the government again will scrape the debt ceiling. And still congressional leaders are punting on the tough choices they keep saying they have to make. When Congress finally agreed to extend the payroll tax break for the rest of this year, it didn’t bother trying to find the $90 billion in savings needed to defray the cost but simply tacked it onto the deficit. “The participants said, ‘We’ve come to an agreement—we’re going to have another helping of dessert,’?” says former Congressional Budget Office Director Robert Reischauer.
President Obama shares in the blame. His budget proposal largely ignores the biggest drivers of future deficits, Medicare and Social Security. One consequence of this timid approach: a Medicare program estimated to cost $1 trillion annually by 2022. It’s little wonder that year after year Congress and the White House sidestep big, difficult challenges when they don’t have the will to take on far easier problems. Last year the Government Accountability Office found hundreds of redundant government programs costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. There are 80 federal economic development programs and 15 agencies in charge of administering food-related laws. Yet Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican who has tried to close some programs and combine others, has found few senators willing to join the cause. “They give it lip service and then don’t do anything,” he says. “There’s no good reason to have 47 job training programs. We’re stealing from our children every day.” Coburn says it should be a cinch to pass obvious cuts like these, “except we have no leadership to get that done.”
One ought not be too surprised about congressional inactivity in tackling budget woes, given the response Paul Ryan endured after unveiling reasonable proposals last year.
