Press Release
Nation’s Oldest Taxpayer Group Says Americans Deserve Better Budget Policy than New Short-Term Continuing Resolution
(Alexandria, VA) – With the introduction of a new three-week
Continuing Resolution (CR), the House of Representatives has for a third time
taken action to prevent a government shutdown and reduce spending. But
taxpayers deserve better than a series of stopgap measures that fail to defund
the disastrous health care law, ruinous greenhouse gas regulations, and
wasteful earmarks. That’s the assessment of the 362,000-member National
Taxpayers Union (NTU), which today expressed frustration with the inaction of
Senate Democratic leaders and President Obama toward passing a long-term plan
to pare back unsustainable spending.
NTU Vice President of Government
Affairs Andrew Moylan said, “While NTU conditionally supported the two-week CR
expiring this Friday as a good-faith measure to allow the Senate to complete
its negotiations, that good faith has been squandered by Democratic leadership
in the Senate and the White House, who appear to have a strategy of dragging their
feet and blaming any lack of progress on House Republicans for political gain.
Since the House has already passed short- and long-term CRs, the time has come
for conservatives to demand that the Senate immediately complete a blueprint of
its own that substantially reduces spending for the rest of the fiscal year.”
During House debate earlier this
month over a CR (H.R.1) designed to address government funding until the end of
Fiscal Year 2011, NTU supported numerous key “riders” to the legislation that
would further trim expenditures and protect taxpayers. These included proposals
to defund last year’s health care legislation, to strip as much as $3 billion
in funding for an alternate engine on the F-35 fighter, to prevent the EPA from
imposing back-door “cap-and-trade” greenhouse gas regulations, and to remove
costly “Davis-Bacon” wage requirements on CR-funded projects. Given the
exceedingly modest level of overall spending reductions in that bill (about 1.5
percent of total outlays this year), NTU considers these amendments to be
absolutely vital elements in any final legislative package.
NTU continues to advocate for
sensible reductions that both sides of the aisle could agree upon; for example,
testimony that Moylan delivered to the House Oversight Committee last month
highlighted a joint
report between NTU and the liberal group U.S. PIRG that identified $600
billion in such cuts. “Enough is enough,” Moylan concluded. “While its plan
will take but a small step in the right direction, the House has completed its
duty to fund the government for the rest of the year. The Senate should take
this week to finish the task taxpayers have been demanding: pass a long-term CR
that puts a sizeable dent in out-of-control deficit spending.”
The 362,000-member
NTU is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working for lower taxes, smaller
government, and economic freedom at all levels. More information is available at
www.ntu.org.
