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House GOP calls for $100 billion spending cut
Budget cuts
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TEXT OF STORY
JEREMY HOBSON: The first proposal this week for spending cuts amounted to about $35 billion worth. But that wasn't enough for conservative Tea Part Members. So today the leaders of the House Appropriations Committee will release a spending plan that has cuts worth twice as much.
As our Washington Bureau Chief John Dimsdale reports, the fight over these steep cuts could lead to a government shutdown.
JOHN DIMSDALE: Newly elected conservative Republicans sent appropriators back to the drawing board to come up with deeper cuts than they originally proposed. Gary Bass at OMB Watch says spending cuts at this level will cost jobs.
GARY BASS: Most of these government programs that are being cut come out in the form of grants or contracts to various groups to carry out the work. It means those people can no longer hire people. Let alone that, they may have to lay people off.
The House will have to reach some accomodation with the Senate and the White House by March 4th, when the temporary budget expires. Budget-writing veteran Pete Davis says House Speaker Boehner may not be able to avoid a government shutdown.
PETE DAVIS: What's he going to do when he can't get enough spending cuts to satisfy the Tea party members of his caucus?
Davis expects Congress may just end up temporarily extending the current budget, kicking the can down the road again.
In Washington, I'm John Dimsdale for Marketplace.
We need to find a way to get Congress to consider all of the deductions, allowances, credits, and other loopholes in the tax code to be "spending." This is really "tax code spending." These things need to be treated as spending that is subject to cuts rather then viewing it as tax increases or cuts. We have a basic tax code, and when Congress grants some way to reduce the tax for somebody then they are SPENDING our money. If we treated all of this as spending which is evaluated and is subject to being cut, then the list of potential targets for spending cuts would be much greater.
