House GOP Budget Contains Major Reforms, but Continues Defense Spending Addiction

House GOP FY 2016 Budget Resolution

The $1.017 Trillion Budget released this week by House Budget Chairman Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) is a major step forward in fiscal responsibility. The most important takeaway from this budget is that the House GOP does see that spending caps are an important way to rein in spending and having a responsible blueprint in order put the country on a path to major deficit reduction.  The one area that still needs improvement in the budget is Defense spending.

While the Chairman has kept Pentagon spending at its $523 billion cap, there is a $90 billion request for the Overseas Contingency Operations Account (OCO), which is essentially a slush fund that is used year after year to fund pet programs and other various projects that really have no value to taxpayers or the Defense of the country.

The legislation struggled to get out of the Budget Committee on Thursday, but a promise from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) that an additional $20 billion that was balked at by some Republicans was promised to be put back in during the Rules Committee mark up.  That $20 billion was supposed to be offset with spending cuts, but a handful of Republicans refused to vote for a bill that didn’t include the additional $20 billion.  At least one Republican saw through the charade.  According to The Hill, “’Finding an additional $20 billion of waste should not be a serious problem,’ said Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), a Budget member who opposed getting rid of offsets.”

Repealing both Obamacare and Dodd-Frank will not only save taxpayers money, but it will also unleash small businesses from a regulatory grip that the federal government has had and continued to grow over the past several years.

Efforts to reform programs like the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) Program and Unemployment Insurance so things like double-dipping, which has been just one on an increasing list of problems with SSDI, will be critical to curbing the growth in fraud and abuse that has been occurring in those areas for quite a long time.

The mechanisms in the budget to give more power to the states for education funding and other programs under federal control will be beneficial to taxpayers because states and localities are better equipped to allocate funding based on the needs of the individual state, as opposed to Washington making those decisions.

There are major reforms not included, like comprehensive tax reform and entitlement reform. However, this budget provides a pathway with which those reforms can begin and it is critical that lawmakers address entitlement reform before those programs get out of control and it becomes to late for any long-term solution.

Even though this budget cuts $5.5 trillion and balances in ten years, taxpayers still need to be concerned about Defense spending. The $90 billion in OCO funding is far more than what the President asked for in his proposal.  And, while there may be some cuts to off-set the increase from the level requested by President Obama, it is more important that OCO be phased out so that every dollar of Pentagon spending is part of the base budget and subject to the levels that were agreed to by Congress and the White House. Before one more dollar is requested above the spending caps or through OCO, the Pentagon needs to pass an audit, completely eliminate earmarks (last year, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance uncovered 293 earmarks worth $13 billion), and eliminate wasteful and unnecessary programs like the F-35 and Abrams tank.

The best way to reform government and reduce spending is to return to a normal process with real budgets that enable Congress to go through the appropriations process, instead of constantly passing short-term stop-gap spending bills. The current House GOP budget proposal puts a great deal on the table that taxpayers can be supportive of, but until the OCO is phased out and every dollar is accounted for, taxpayers should still be concerned.