GOP Announces Legislation to Cut $2.5 Trillion in Federal Spending

Republicans will announce legislation to cut $2.5 trillion over ten years today. The proposal includes cutting non-defense discretionary spending back to 2006 levels.
The Daily Caller reported:

A number of the House GOP’s leading conservative members on Thursday will announce legislation that would cut $2.5 trillion over 10 years, which will be by far the most ambitious and far-reaching proposal by the new majority to cut federal government spending.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, will unveil the bill in a speech at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday morning.

Jordan’s bill, which will have a companion bill introduced in the Senate by Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, would impose deep and broad cuts across the federal government. It includes both budget-wide cuts on non-defense discretionary spending back to 2006 levels and proposes the elimination or drastic reduction of more than 50 government programs.

Jordan’s “Spending Reduction Act” would eliminate such things as the U.S. Agency for International Development and its $1.39 billion annual budget, the $445 million annual subsidy for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the $1.5 billion annual subsidy for Amtrak, $2.5 billion in high speed rail grants, the $150 million subsidy for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and it would cut in half to $7.5 billion the federal travel budget.

But the program eliminations and reductions would account for only $330 billion of the $2.5 trillion in cuts. The bulk of the cuts would come from returning non-defense discretionary spending – which is currently $670 billion out of a $3.8 trillion budget for the 2011 fiscal year – to the 2006 level of $496.7 billion, through 2021.

#1 January 20, 2011 at 10:31 am
patman commented:

refreshing, ain’t it…
#2 January 20, 2011 at 10:31 am
JimmyT commented:

The annual budget is 3.5 to 4 TRILLION. 2.5 over 10 years is not even 10% of the 35 to 40 TRILLION that will be budgeted. Congress needs to focus on a maximum annual budget of 20% of GDP. This translates to about 2.6 to 2.8 TRILLION. With waste and fraud at about 2 to 3%, are the telling us they can ONLY find 2.5 TRILLION in cuts? BS! Not good enough. They need to have a budget of 2.8 trillion or less. This translates to 8 trillion in cuts over 10 years. They have a lot more work to do.
#3 January 20, 2011 at 10:35 am
JimmyT commented:

Big deal. That’s about 5 trillion short of where it needs to be over 10 years. Business as usual.
#4 January 20, 2011 at 10:37 am
Paul Ben commented:

How about having the Democrap RETURN the money they stole from us for their enjoyment, um, let’s say for example, their vacation to the global HOAX summit in Copenhagen, just to cite one wasteful spending?!?!
#5 January 20, 2011 at 10:39 am
McClipper@Work commented:

Now make sure we expose anyone in Congress who opposes it.
#6 January 20, 2011 at 10:43 am
Robert commented:

I wonder why conservatives cannot ever cut any defense spending. There is a LOT of discretionary spending within the Department of Defense, that could be pared back without impacting the safety of our troops in action.

i would also mention waste, fraud, and abuse, but since we aren’t going after any of that in Medicare (although it was promised) then why worry about it anywhere else?
#7 January 20, 2011 at 10:43 am
The All Real Numbers Symbol commented:

#4 – Ditto.

Does this bill eliminate the Department of Education and the National endowment for the Arts? Ooh, I hope so!!!
#8 January 20, 2011 at 10:46 am
bg commented:

++

OT??

Bail them out, regulate them, then work for them

[In the summer of 2008, Senate banking committee chief counsel Amy Friend helped bail out Bank of America and the rest of the mortgage industry. A couple months later, Friend helped craft the Great Wall Street Bailout. After that, she helped her boss, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., pass a sweeping financial regulation bill.

[..]

But back to Amy Friend. Check out Promontory’s press release about
Friend’s hire: She will work on “the regulatory implementation of the
Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010,
which, at 2,300 pages, is one of the most complex and wide-ranging
overhauls of the financial regulatory framework in decades.”

Translated: “There’s a lot of lobbying left to do on this bill, and thousands
of hurdles and loopholes to navigate — you’d better get the bill’s author on
your side.”]

==
#9 January 20, 2011 at 10:49 am
Muffin commented:

Not nearly enough, but let’s get on with it already. Cut TSA, did they forget that?
#10 January 20, 2011 at 10:51 am
Stan25 commented:

That should be $2.5 Trillion for just this year.
#11 January 20, 2011 at 10:51 am
Sandy commented:

It was brilliant to announce the specific nature of these cuts and should render those Dems mute who have spend the last 70 years frightening seniors with the loss of their Social Security.

OK Obama veto this and take ownership of this massive defict.
#12 January 20, 2011 at 10:55 am
wanumba commented:

I was going to quibble about USAID because once upon a time it did some good stuff – road construction, emergency food aid, vaccinations, but Bill CLinton hauled it off much-appreciated neutral concrete accomplishments and put it to highly resented and embarassing condom distribution – evidently USAID became the world’s largest condom dispenser as it worried about animals like pandas instead of people. What a horrible travesty under the name of “development.”
Much of the UN’s food distributed thru FAO and WFP comes from the USA, marked as UN that maybe the Democrats succeeded in making USAID a useless third wheel.
#13 January 20, 2011 at 10:58 am
bigkahuna commented:

Simply put..A nice Start…Now keep cutting.

Eliminate a ton of worthless programs totaly
#14 January 20, 2011 at 10:59 am
StrangernFiction commented:

Let the wobbling begin.
#15 January 20, 2011 at 11:02 am
wanumba commented:

Ditto
Department of Education
National Endowment of the Arts
Release college loans from monopolistic bondage in ObamaCare

The Left has taken everyone’s money in education, took the money, teaches useless crap, wasting everyone’s time while raising prices, encouraging student debt loads, and managed to infiltrate and cow the “independent testing” services to dummy down the exams to hide up the decline, and expanded the revenue of the testing business by encouraging students to churn their testing accounts by taking repeat tests to raise scores.
GAH!
#16 January 20, 2011 at 11:14 am
Neo commented:

Bravo! Now its time to really cut the pork, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, dept of education, EPA and all other wasteful programs! the goverment doesn’t need to be paying for these things, I’m sick of the constant tax increases for public schools.. now that we have the American people by our side we need to cut cut cut until we need no more income tax!
#17 January 20, 2011 at 11:22 am
Bobbi commented:

did I see half of 7.5 billion on federal travel to be cut? Why not all of it? I’m tired of paying for Obama’s campaigning
#18 January 20, 2011 at 11:23 am
martha commented:

Cut the FCC, EPA DOE,Dept of Energy and all useless beauracies, which is most of them.
#19 January 20, 2011 at 11:32 am
captainfish commented:

TIME TO START CUTTING NON-DISCRETIONARY SPENDING
#20 January 20, 2011 at 11:32 am
TheTriGuy commented:

The USDA has billions in it’s budget that is used mainly to compete with private industry. I know. I work in one of those industries! I also know that when we look at trillions, billions seems like small change but billions still add up and can serve to lower the cost of government doing business.
#21 January 20, 2011 at 11:46 am
Lee commented:

You know, this is pretty brave of the Republicans, considering their history. Instead of criticizing it might be a good idea to drop an encouraging note to your rep, thanking him and urging him to continue this line.

You have to start somewhere, and this is a decent start.

Let them know that you’re behind them and will back them up. Sometimes a carrot is better than a stick.
#22 January 20, 2011 at 12:02 pm
Tank commented:

This is a good start.
#24 January 20, 2011 at 12:07 pm
mercador commented:

If these people work for us why do we not have the right to ok if they have a good reason to travel. Use go to meeting.
#25 January 20, 2011 at 12:08 pm
dunce commented:

The libs have been demanding to know which programs the republicans wanted to cut because every handout has a constituency. This is an example of being carefull of what you wish for. They hoped to pick a single “targeted” program and accuse this republicans of the usual unfeeling cruelty and killing helpless people. The libs do not deem unborn babys people so of course then they are not hypocrits. Deeming and judicial fiats are so much better than democracy and that old paper called the constitution that is somehow alive in their hands
#26 January 20, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Stuart commented:

A good start indeed. Now let us cut the rivers of money that always seem to end up in the pockets of African dictators, assorted Pakistani thugs, and Palestinian terrorists. Lets get the hell out of the U.N. and turn the damn headquarters building into a Walmart. Oh yes, one more thing lets get the hell out of Korea and by accident leave a few nukes behind for the Southies. I think they would make rather good use of them.
#27 January 20, 2011 at 12:23 pm
eaglewingz08 commented:

This is crazy. $250 Billion is twenty percent of the current deficit. If they went back to 2008 budget levels that would cut one trillion from the budget this year alone. Over the same 10 year period the budget deficit without these cuts would be an additional TWELVE TO FIFTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS and the National Debt would increase to TWENTY SIX TRILLION DOLLARS.
I hope the Republicans haven’t decided to just play nice music while riding the US Titanic because otherwise there will be many new republican faces in 2012 to replace the present feckless crowd.
#28 January 20, 2011 at 12:25 pm
fightinggranny commented:

#10, Stan, I agree completely. We should reduce 2.5T EVERY YEAR until we run a balanced budget. They haven’t scratched the surface. There are entire departments, duplication of departments, FCC, EPA, who need to be DEFUNDED and ELIMINATED. Ready to get down to the hard work, let’s do it and call for our legislatures to DO IT. How wonderful life would be without these departments (see the BLACKMAIL of Comcast to acquire NBC, COMCAST should bail out of the deal…increasing bills from Comcast on the way).
#29 January 20, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Lorenzo commented:

Half of the U.S. budget is military related so the GOP would have to dismantle the entire government if it wants to reduce the huge deficit. To produce budget cut proposals that omits military spending might go over well at the Heritage Foundation that I am told is financed by the military, but it is totally a cynical useless sham.
#30 January 20, 2011 at 12:31 pm
Roland THTG commented:

Why is there any “discretionary” spending?
We had, what, a Trillion in defecits each of the last two years?

Cut.It.All.
#31 January 20, 2011 at 12:43 pm
Militant Conservative commented:

Starve the beast. Damn good start. Get the ball rolling and watch the support heighten for the new congress.

I know there can be more folks, this is movement in the correct direction.

This is the death blow for anything the democrats want for it is anti socialist.

powder is dry.
#32 January 20, 2011 at 12:48 pm
american patriot commented:

Where to start cutting?

O’ I don’t know. Perhaps we could just start the ‘A’s…
1. Administration for Children and Families (ACF)
2. Administration for Native Americans
3. Administration on Aging (AoA)
4. Administration on Developmental Disabilities
5. Administrative Committee of the Federal Register
6. Administrative Conference of the United States
…

When done with all the ‘A’s we can move on to the ‘B’s and so forth. This ought to be good as there is a sh*tload of “Bureau of” agencies.

Once we finish up with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, we can start talking about getting out of unconstitutional wars, Congressional perks and pensions, foreign aid, and Congressional staff sizes.
#33 January 20, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Andreas K. commented:

Good move.

If you want to know where the out of control spending leads to… look into the EU.
#34 January 20, 2011 at 1:57 pm
jorgen commented:

Good start. And don’t forget to cut the costs of the Champagne-socialist in the White House.
#35 January 20, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Jerry C commented:

#2 & 32-Amen

Since the Federal government produces nothing and sucks money from the private sector, why doesn’t Congress pass an Amendment that the Federal government (spending) be less than or = to a % of the private sector?

That would require about $2-3 trillion reduction per year for the next 10-20 years; or approximately about 5-10% less government agencies per year until it becomes limited.

Of course, I’m not holding my breath.
#37 January 20, 2011 at 3:31 pm
luckyone commented:

Let’s Roll!!
#38 January 20, 2011 at 3:53 pm
tommy mc donnell commented:

the american people will never get their freedom back until they take back the right to the fruits of their labor from the ruling political class.
#39 January 20, 2011 at 4:03 pm
averagemelon commented:

The total tax paid by ANY American should be 10% cumulative to ALL governments (federal, state, and local). This would keep governments lean and sized properly. No business should pay tax but instead, is REQUIRED to give 25% of its profits to its employees every year OR LOSE ITS BUSINESS THROUGH LIQIDATION. The only other tax/fee is the consumer fair tax for ALL sales. The more you spend, the more you are taxed. Poor pay less, rich pay more.

Money will be left to its proper owners: the EARNERS and businesses would fail or succeed by the competence of its workforce and/or investments, and everyone would benefit but the rotten louse called government.
#40 January 20, 2011 at 6:04 pm
xqqme commented:

Money will be left to its proper owners

oh, brother or should I say comrade
#42 January 21, 2011 at 1:24 am
DaMav commented:

I’ve already written my C-critter to get behind this. Outstanding first step. Not only does it cut spending in general, it nails a decent amount of direct subsidy to the left. And repeals Davis-Bacon. Wow! The things conservatives wanted and expected on spending 20 years ago and the Republican (sic) Party failed to deliver. Great first step.