Did you miss last week's issue of NTUF's Taxpayer's Tab? If so, here's a quick recap.
The so-called “Super Committee” did not live up to its billing as the bipartisan Congressional panel failed to reach an agreement on a deficit reduction plan. This is not a surprising development. After its creation, NTUF analyzed the spending agendas of its members and warned that the lack of common ground on how to cut spending might doom the committee’s efforts.
Are there other options to cutting spending -- in addition to or in place of the automatic spending cuts required by the Committee's failure? NTUF’s BillTally program has identified non-overlapping spending reduction legislation in the House and Senate that could trim $1.5 trillion from the budget over the next five years – even more than the $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction the Super Committee was tasked with finding over a 10-year period.
Estimated Annual Savings by Chamber 112th Congress (in Billions of Dollars) | |||||
Chamber | Total # of Savings Bills | Non-Overlapping Savings Bills | Annualized Savings | Annualized Savings Resulting from Spending Caps or Rescission of Nonspecific Unobligated Funds | Annualized Savings Resulting from Specific Cuts |
| House | 124 | 82 | ($597.4) | ($448.4) | ($149.0) |
| Senate | 75 | 53 | ($751.0) | ($496.5) | ($254.5) |
| Total | 199 | 99 | ($851.6) | ($532.9) | ($318.7) |
| Source: NTUF BillTally Sytem Note: Data is preliminary. | |||||
Through mid-November, NTUF’s analysts have scored 199 savings bills in the House and Senate combined. A number of these proposals overlap because the same (or similar) legislation was introduced in both Chambers. Excluding these measures, Representatives and Senators authored 99 non-overlapping savings. If enacted into law, these proposals would cut spending by $851.6 billion, or $1.5 trillion over five years. Some of these bills would implement cuts in their first year, others would spread them out between two to five years. Most of these savings ($532.9 billion) would be implemented through spending caps or rescissions of unobligated amounts, while just $318.8 billion of the cuts target specific programs.
NTUF breaks the spending cuts out by category and finds that largest annualized savings are due to spending caps ($281.0 billion in the House, and $406.2 billion in the Senate) and multiple proposals to rescind unobligated funds of varying amounts. Savings in the Health category are largely due to repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ($40.3 billion). The House and Senate would each save money in the Federal Government category through workforce attrition, the reduction of excess federal property, and the elimination of duplicate programs identified by the Government Accountability Office. Most of the House savings in National Defense area are attributable to H.R. 413, to cut $36.4 billion from the Department of Defense’s budget.
The Tab also includes a look at savings bills sponsored by party, and it concludes by noting that the 99 proposals featured in the report provide a starting point for a way forward to tackle the budget crisis.
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