Today, NTU joined with the liberal group U.S. PIRG to release a report called "Toward Common Ground: Bridging the Political Divide to Reduce Spending." This report debuts a list of $600 billion worth of specific federal spending reductions. With all the talk about debt and deficits, we saw an opportunity to put together a true left-right coalition in order to begin the conversation about the difficult choices we’ll have to make as a nation. We thought it would be useful to reach across the ideological divide to identify specific items that we could cut from the federal budget without reducing the quality of government services or neglecting the government's basic commitments. The U.S. PIRG and NTU study identifies 30 specific, actionable items to cut in federal spending, including:
- $62 billion in savings by eliminating wasteful subsidies to farmers and large corporations.
- $354 billion in savings from reforming inefficient contract and acquisition procedures.
- $77 billion in savings by improving execution of existing government programs as well as eliminating unneeded programs.
- $108 billion in savings from ending low-priority or unnecessary weapons systems, along with rightsizing other programs.
While we're under no illusions that every group or individual on the left and right will agree with our list, we think that it can serve as something of a consensus document from which Congress and the President's Fiscal Commission can work. Simply stated, we can't continue to kick the can down the road on reducing the size of the federal government. In order to head off a debt crisis like that facing Greece today, we need to begin scaling back our unsustainable spending habits. This list can help to do that without starting a political food fight.