Unsustainable consequences from years of fiscal recklessness should help congressional leaders to present a budget plan that reduces spending and the national debt, which is currently over $31.5 trillion. Both Congress and President Biden need to find common ground and agree on a responsible budget and statutory debt limit before a Treasury Department-imposed deadline in June.
Earlier this month, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) met with Biden, where they had a “frank and straightforward dialogue” on the debt limit and government spending. Since then, House Republicans have been busy seeking a positive solution to the debt crisis, at least in their eyes, as spending cuts being considered will most definitely affect left-wing programs.
“Republicans are eyeing $150 billion in spending cuts that reflect a hardline drive to target education, healthcare and housing — particularly efforts to address racial inequities that conservatives deride as “woke” — as they push forward in talks on the federal debt ceiling,” reported Reuters.
With talks of cutting the discretionary spending on socialist-style programs that has rapidly ramped up under Biden, an agreement on a budget by June looks to be impossible, especially with McCarthy vowing not to allow an increase in the legal limit on federal borrowing without an agreement from Democrats in Congress to rein in federal spending.
House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington told Reuters that Republicans are assembling a budget along the lines of a budget proposal developed by Russell Vought, president of Center for Renewing America (CRA), who also served as President Trump’s budget chief.
Vought’s budget plan is one that aligns with the views of 20th-century fiscal conservative President Calvin Coolidge. According to the Coolidge Foundation,
Coolidge believed in a limited government and rejected the progressive philosophy that argued for a larger central government managed by an administrative regulatory bureaucracy. Coolidge believed that this was unconstitutional. “Government extravagance is not only contrary to the whole teaching of our Constitution, but violates the fundamental conceptions and the very genius of American institutions,” noted Coolidge.
The CRA budget proposal being reviewed by House Republicans states clearly the cultural revolution that has infiltrated our federal government:
The nation is just beginning to wake up to and meet the threat of a century-long cultural revolution that divides the country on the basis of race and “identity,” disintegrates the institutions of western civilizations from within, teaches rising generations to hate their country and each other, and encourages the destruction of neighborhoods and cities which by extension are not worth saving. This revolution started in left-wing universities but has long since become the central worldview of the regime’s governing elites.
Admitting that the budget crisis will take time to overcome, the proposed budget plan offers cuts in discretionary spending over the next 10 years, and ultimately reduces the national debt by $9 trillion. The budget plan makes no reductions to Social Security or Medicare benefits, as promised to concerned Americans by McCarthy.
According to Reuters, Vought “did not provide a full accounting of the $150 billion in cuts, but said it included about $25 billion from the Department of Education, including what he called ‘woke’ policies such as score-improvement programs and culturally responsive schooling.”
His plan reminds Congress that budgeting is an “opportunity to examine what in fact the country is spending money on,” and that the budget process should be “aimed at maintaining a political coalition necessary to vote for the plan,” as “the Left has no interest in ever regaining fiscal rationality.” Vought questions the current spending that has driven the nation further into debt while purposely dividing the nation. “Why should billions be spent on thousands of interwoven nonprofits, all with a vested interest in furthering multiculturalism through an open border strategy and engaging in lawfare against any effort to control the border?” he asks.
“In short, America cannot be saved unless the current grip of woke and weaponized government is broken. That is a central and immediate threat facing the country — the one that all our statesmen must rise tall to vanquish. The battle cannot wait,” writes Vought, adding, “However, this woke and weaponized regime requires the resources of taxpayers to flourish and can be starved in order to dismantle it. Of course, these spending cuts will result in significant savings for the taxpayers.”
The budget discussion will be one that needs to address all aspects of the true fiscal needs of the nation. Cutting ideologically driven expenditures from the federal spending is a must to end the current systemic fiscal recklessness treated as the norm by Democrats. The hard part will be a settling on a budget process that is agreeable for all of Congress — Republicans and Democrats — and the president. Even gaining a budget agreeable to all Republicans will be a huge first step. McCarthy has his work cut out for him.
Reuters shared, “The House Budget Committee’s top Democrat, Brendan Boyle, expressed skepticism that the hardliners’ plan would win wide backing: ‘Republicans needed 15 rounds just to elect a speaker, so I can’t imagine they will have an easy time advancing a budget that all of their members will support.'”
If Republicans on the House Budget Committee can glean any wisdom from Vought’s budget plan, they should take note as he writes, “This Budget is an effort to separate the spending the nation desperately needs (a massive Navy, a completed border wall, infrastructure, etc.) from spending that is not just simply unaffordable but ruining communities and funding organizations that hate the country.”
