Policymakers Should Support Deficit Reduction in Financial Services Spending Bill

For Immediate Release

The House is expected to vote this week on a minibus appropriations bill that includes the Financial Services and General Government bill. The Financial Services segment takes $585 million – 2.5 percent of its allocation – and places those savings in a “Fund for America’s Kids and Grandkids” that can only be spent if the budget is balanced.

The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

The Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee has the right idea setting aside some money for deficit reduction. The recent cap increases allowed spending above what either side asked for, while charging the cost to future generations. Setting aside a tiny fraction of that money to reduce impending trillion-dollar deficits would be a move in the right direction. Appropriators do not have to spend every single dollar they are allowed to.

$585 million isn’t much out of a $4 trillion budget. But if all appropriators followed this subcommittee’s lead, we’d save over $30 billion per year – reducing the cost of Congress’s recent spending spree by one-fifth.

Of course, much more would still need to be done to make a real dent in our burgeoning national debt. But this proposal is a fresh and creative step in the right direction.

Within a decade or so, debt will overtake the size of the entire economy and annual interest payments will top $1 trillion. Our fiscal problems cannot be solved overnight or with a single idea, but ideas like this one are a good place to start.

###

For more information contact Patrick Newton, press secretary, at newton@crfb.org.