As the budget battle inside the Republican Party
heats up, a large group of conservative House Republicans called Thursday for a drastic defunding of the U.S. Agency for International Development and a host
of other programs.
The Republican Study Committee (RSC), a loose
conglomeration of 165 self-identified conservative GOP House members, unveiled
their plan Thursday that they argue could save $2.5 trillion
in federal spending over ten years. The proposal is centered around legislation
that would slash or eliminate federal funding for USAID, the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting, the U.S. Trade Development Agency, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the
USDA Sugar Program, economic assistance to Egypt, and many other programs.
The RSC plan calls for $1.39 billion in annual savings from USAID. The USAID operating budget for fiscal 2010 was approximately $1.65 billion. The RSC spending plan summary was not clear if all the cuts would come from operations or from USAID administered programs.
The bill is being led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the RSC chairman, Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ), chairman of the RSC Budget and Spending Task
Force. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is
expected to offer a Senate version of the legislation.
The RSC plan also calls for Republicans to fulfill
their campaign promise
to trim $100 billion from the budget this year by returning "non-security"
discretionary spending to 2008 levels in the next funding bill for fiscal 2011,
which is needed to keep the government running when the temporary funding bill
expires March 4. It would also call for spending to be cut to 2006 levels and
then remain flat for the next ten years.
"The current continuing resolution (CR) will expire
on March 4th. Under your leadership during the campaign, House
Republicans boldly pledged to cut federal spending by $100 billion by returning
current spending back to FY2008 levels," read
a letter circulated Jan 20 and addressed to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). "Despite the added
challenge of being four months into the current fiscal year, we still must keep
our $100 billion pledge to the American people."
The GOP plan to defund USAID goes even further than Majority
Whip Eric Cantor's suggestion
last October to halt foreign aid to countries that
don't share U.S. interests, but Cantor gave a lukewarm endorsement to the RSC
plan Thursday.
"I applaud the
Republican Study Committee for proposing cuts in federal spending, and I look
forward to the discussion on reducing spending that our country so desperately
needs to have," Cantor said
in a statement. "I look forward to these cuts and others being brought to
the floor for an up-or-down vote during consideration of the CR, and I support
that effort."
If the RSC plan was
ever implemented, which is doubtful, the State Department would be in the
firing line for huge cuts. Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) announced,
on her first day as
chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, that she wanted to take an
axe to the State Department and foreign aid budgets. Her appropriations
counterpart, House Appropriations State and Foreign Ops subcommittee chairwoman
Kay Granger (R-TX) has
made similar statements in the past.
Reached by The Cable Thursday, an aide to Granger
said, "Everything is on the table for potential cuts. We
appreciate the RSC's suggestions as a starting point and will consider their
ideas going forward."
Of course, "everything" suggests that the defense
budget, previously sacrosanct in the GOP, is now part of the debate over cuts.
That's one key area where the divisions inside the GOP caucus will come to
light, said Tom Donnelly, director
of the American Enterprise Institute's Center for Defense
Studies.
The House GOP leadership is caught between those in
their caucus who want to slash and burn federal spending right now and those
who want to have a more protracted debate over spending priorities to make sure
key items like defense are protected, he said.
"The GOP House leaders have to take account of their
new members. They also understand that the Tea Party impulse is not something
they can manage, so they have to respond as well as lead and they can't
dictate. It's not like 1994, where Newt
Gingrich was a colossus who could dictate the landscape. This is a bottom
up shift not a top down," Donnelly said.
The tensions inside the GOP caucus were on full
display Wednesday evening, when freshman South Carolina Tea Party Rep. Tim Scott successfully added an
amendment to the Republican's budget rule that removed flexibility in timing
for the budget cuts. Scott was able to change the language from demanding a
"transition" to 2008 levels to insisting that change be enacted right away, as
was advocated by GOP Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI).
The RSC plan is so drastic and extends its projected
cuts so far out into the future that its chances for implementation are slim to
none, Donnelly said. But the struggle inside the GOP on the issue is real.
"This debate will do a lot to define the nature of
what conservatism is, going forward -- whether it's a more libertarian or
Reaganite movement," he said. "The House Democrats are largely spectators at
this point."
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