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Legislative Update from Washington

Washington, D.C., June 19, 2019

Let’s say someone had a mountain of credit card debt, and most every month he spent more than he earned. Then let’s say our hypothetical person made some changes.

Maybe it was small, like switching to a cheaper cell phone plan. Or something larger, like paying off a car. Either way, he now has a little more money to work with. But that does NOT mean he has the luxury to increase spending in other areas. The wise choice would be to apply those savings to help reduce his deficit, and (hopefully) to start pay down his credit cards, right?

Well that was the premise back in 2010, when Republicans implemented a concept called “Spending Reduction Accounts” (SRA). Whenever there were cuts, instead of simply freeing up room within budget limits for higher spending elsewhere, those funds could be allocated to a SRA. It was essentially a “lock box” that applied those savings towards reduction of our deficit.

Unfortunately, Democrats have removed SRAs from the latest appropriations bills. This means if we cut spending somewhere, the savings must now be moved to other programs, or reserved for future uses. We can no longer easily use those cuts to reduce our deficit.

This is very disappointing.

Yesterday I, along with 14 of my Republican colleagues, sent a letter to Democrat leadership expressing frustration over this. As I’ve said countless times, our federal government has a massive spending problem. There is so much that can be cut, but if cuts cannot be applied to reduce our deficit, then how will we ever get our fiscal house in order?