The largest conservative faction of House lawmakers released “guiding principles” for a fiscal 2017 budget that clash with a bipartisan spending agreement GOP leaders hope to follow.
The Republican Study Committee’s guidelines call for a reduction in both mandatory and discretionary spending, two achievements that will be next to impossible this year.
That’s because House and Senate Democrats and Republicans last year signed onto a budget that will top spending at $1.07 trillion, which is $30 billion above the spending caps. Members of the RSC, made up of more than 170 lawmakers, want Republican leaders to bring a budget to the floor that spends no more than $1.04 trillion.
“This year’s budget should reduce discretionary spending and restore sanity to our nation’s fiscal policy,” the RSC wrote in its guidelines.
The group also wants the budget to reduce mandatory spending on programs including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which they say comprise two-thirds of the federal budget and are threatened with future insolvency.
Republicans are discussing cuts on the mandatory side, but on measures that would be voted on separately and with no guarantee of passage in the Senate, and almost no chance of a presidential signature.
The RSC guidelines also push for defense spending to increase over the next decade to help the military meet “threats posed by [the Islamic State], Iran, China, North Korea and Russia.”
Other must-haves for the RSC are a “framework for pro-growth tax regulatory reform” and a reduction in “burdensome regulations” put in place by the federal government that contribute to stalled economic growth.
The House GOP leadership is still working on a budget plan they hope can unite the party, but lawmakers and GOP aides said they are unlikely to waver from the $1.07 trillion figure that won bipartisan support last year.
“We’ll stick to the number,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., told the Washington Examiner. “The number’s the law.”
