House lawmakers on Thursday announced a new Waste-Cutters Caucus that will push legislation to cut back on wasteful spending in a bid to reduce the $21.5 trillion national debt.
Freshman lawmaker Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., announced the new group along with Citizens Against Government Waste.
“The premise behind this caucus is to bring attention and awareness to the fact that we have an uncontrollable national debt, and that we need to act now before it’s too late,” Norman said in a statement. “We want to use this caucus to highlight government-funded programs that are wasteful and benefit only a select few.”
“We want to highlight and offer amendments to end wasteful programs and riders in appropriations bills,” he added.
Brat joined Norman in noting that piling up federal debt will only end up crushing everyone’s children.
“One of the cruelest things we can do to our children is make them pay not only for their own government programs, but ours as well,” he said.
Several lawmakers over the last few decades have issues annual reports about wasteful government spending, but few of their proposals result in legislation that leads to reduced spending.
Federal spending has been held in check over the past several years, but Republicans and Democrats this year agreed to spend another $300 billion over fiscal years 2018 and 2019 to boost defense and domestic spending programs.
