Rescission Bill Should Be No-Brainer

For Immediate Release

The House of Representatives narrowly passed a bill to rescind $14.7 billion in federal funds last week that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will save $1.1 billion over ten years. The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

Savings from the House-passed rescission bill is the federal budgeting equivalent of loose change in the sofa cushions. It reclaims only 0.002 percent of spending over a decade at a time when permanent trillion-dollar deficits are about to emerge.

Most of the $15 billion of rescinded spending in the bill wasn’t going to be spent anyway. This frankly is the easiest fiscal vote Congress has faced for quite a while. The Senate should pass this or an amended rescission bill and move on to the real fiscal issues facing our nation.

Over the next 16 years, five of our nation’s major trust funds – including Social Security and Medicare – are projected to be insolvent. That would be a crisis totaling in the trillions. In just over a decade, our national debt will overtake the size of the entire economy and interest payments will top one trillion dollars per year.

We need a comprehensive deficit reduction plan that puts our large and growing national debt on a downward path as a share of the economy. The rescission bill is a baby step in the right direction.

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