Late last semester, I wrote a column for this paper titled “After sweeping the midterm elections, Republicans must prove themselves.” I am sad to report they have not lived up to their promises. Republicans now have control over both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and they have the ability to start passing legislation to heal America’s wounds that have only been getting worse over the past decade.
These wounds include the national debt, out-of-control spending and entitlement reform. They have been given an enormous opportunity to display to the American people that they are the ones to get our economic house in order, and the best way to do that is with a budget. With the budget that passed the House last week, they are taking this opportunity for real growth and throwing it away.
My previous column mentioned that Republicans “should pass a budget that doesn’t continue to spend us into oblivion,” and it is very frustrating that their budget does the exact opposite. Republicans are touting that this budget reduces spending by $5.5 trillion over the next 10 years, which is a bit of a stretch. There are no real cuts, only a reduction in the growth of spending. So, if an agency were going to get a 10 percent increase in its budget, Republicans said, “No, you only get a 7 percent increase in your budget,” and then patted themselves on the back for cutting spending. It’s similar to slowing down a car as it nears the edge of a cliff instead of coming to a stop and backing up.
In addition, Republicans have claimed that this reduction in spending over the next 10 years will lead to a balanced budget, with a surplus of $33 billion in 2025. That sounds fantastic, until you realize that their projections for this include repealing the Affordable Care Act, which is not guaranteed. To tell people that it will be is incredibly misleading. This budget is riddled with accounting gimmicks and projections that may not come to fruition.
Perhaps the most insulting part of this budget is that Republicans pull a “House of Cards” trick to increase military spending without having to actually increase it in the budget. To accomplish this, the budget calls for military spending to be increased from the Overseas Contingency Operations budget, which was established after 9/11 as an emergency fund for immediate war, where getting approval from Congress would take too much time. Military spending couldn’t be increased beyond caps established by the Budget Control Act of 2011, so to appeal to military hawks, Republicans are raiding this stash of cash and establishing a dangerous precedent of treating the OCO as a permanent slush fund. The Wall Street Journal noted that “the OCO is perhaps the worst way to fund the military” because it “lacks oversight and accountability within a Pentagon already famous for its inability to know where the money is going.”
Too many Republicans call for reforming entitlement programs, social welfare and other programs — which would be most welcome, don’t get me wrong — but almost none are willing to admit that there is a slight possibility the military should be cut. We all know that in every department and agency of the government, there is waste, fraud and abuse, and the military is not immune. It’s irresponsible to call for an audit of the Federal Reserve but not the military.
The most shocking is that Republicans had a chance to pass a budget that actually made substantial changes to D.C.’s lifestyle of overspending and regulating too much.
The Republican Study Committee has released its own budget. It would have actually reduced spending to an average of 18.2 percent of GDP, promoted healthy tax reform, made real changes to Medicare and Social Security needed to sustain them and pass the American Health Care Reform Act, which would be much better at solving America’s health care problem than the Affordable Care Act.
But when Republicans voted on this Wednesday, 112 Republicans — nearly half — voted no. Half of Congressional Republicans decided to go with a watered-down version of the budget because it was a politically better for them. Republicans need to get their act together and realize we don’t need politics. We need results.
Nick Eagle is a UF economics and political science senior. His column appears on Mondays.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 3/30/2015 under the headline “Republicans wimp out with the House budget for the sake of political games”]
