(Alexandria, VA) -- Lawmakers seeking common ground in the fight against out-of-control deficit spending can find many useful directions for reaching it in the "Blue Dog" Democrats' budget reform package, according to the 350,000-member National Taxpayers Union (NTU). Today the non-partisan NTU strongly backed a number of the spending discipline and government accountability provisions proposed by the caucus of Democratic House Members, and urged fiscally-conservative lawmakers in both parties to enact sensible constraints on the growth of government.
"Conservative lawmakers represented by the Republican Study Committee (RSC) have been sounding an often-lonely alarm bell over the need to reverse runaway federal spending," said NTU Economic Policy Analyst Tad DeHaven. "However, with the Blue Dog Democrats now offering serious ideas on how to change the course of our fiscal ship, conditions are ripe to make desperately needed bipartisan repairs to the faulty rudder that has been steering the budget process into a sea of red ink."
In a letter sent yesterday to House and Senate Budget Committee Members, NTU President John Berthoud noted that federal spending is projected to have grown 33 percent from Fiscal Year 2001 through Fiscal Year 2005, demonstrating a "lack of spending restraint" that may very well have "brought the majority party to the brink of complete political stalemate."
The Blue Dog Democrats' plan contains many proposals that NTU aggressively backed at the beginning of this Congress when they were first proposed by the House Republican Study Committee, such as requiring bills calling for more than $50 million in new spending to be put to a roll call vote, ending abuses of the "emergency" spending designation, and repealing the "Gephardt Rule" that allows lawmakers to raise the federal debt limit automatically with the Budget Resolution.
But NTU also supports other, unique elements of the Blue Dog package, which would:
- Cap discretionary spending for the next three years at 2.1 percent -- lower than the President's proposal;
- Force Members of Congress to justify earmarked pet projects (pork) in writing;
- Freeze the budget of any federal agency that fails to pass an audit; and,
- Require Members to be given at least three days to read the final text of legislation.
NTU likewise praised the Blue Dog proposal for a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) to the U.S. Constitution, which would require peacetime federal outlays to balance with revenues unless a 3/5 "supermajority" in Congress approved a specific deficit (this measure passed the House in 1995 and subsequently fell one vote short of the 2/3 margin required for Senate passage). NTU also favors enactment of a Constitutional Amendment establishing a 2/3 "supermajority" safeguard against higher taxes, and would oppose extension of the so-called "PAYGO" rules to taxation that often thwart long-term tax relief.
"Taken as a whole, the Blue Dog proposal moves the debate over budget reform forward, and most of its elements deserve thoughtful consideration from both sides of the aisle," DeHaven concluded. "Armed with reform plans from the Blue Dogs and the RSC, lawmakers who are serious about fiscal discipline can forge an alliance to take on the big spenders who unfairly dominate the budget process."
NTU is a non-partisan citizen group founded in 1969 to work for lower taxes and smaller government. Note: Items on the Balanced Budget Amendment, an Issue Brief on the RSC budget reforms, and Dr. Berthoud's letter to the Budget Committee Members are available at www.ntu.org.
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