The $15 billion rescission package the White House released Tuesday is the largest request an administration has made with this power, reviving a tool that has been used to great effect throughout our modern history. While both Republican and Democratic presidents have used this authority, the last two administrations failed to do so. Against this backdrop, it is perhaps not surprising that President Trump’s efforts are already meeting resistance from those who believe the executive branch should use its power to expand, rather than shrink, the size of government.
In fact, the criticisms of the rescissions package do more to illuminate what’s broken about Washington’s spending culture than admonish the package itself.
Sure, few have ever accused Democrats of promoting discipline in federal spending, but their transparent attacks on the content of the rescissions package elevate their fiscal fecklessness to a new art form. Democrats have been quick to criticize rescissions related to the Children’s Health Insurance Program, even though the exact same pot of unused money was included as a pay-for in this spring’s omnibus spending package, which 111 House Democrats supported.
It is also ridiculous to suggest that rescinding these unspent funds somehow undermines the integrity of CHIP — in fact, the opposite is true. Because of the arcane mechanics of authorizing law, most of the money the package targets cannot be spent. Rather than letting these funds sit unused on CHIP’s balance sheets, both taxpayers and beneficiaries of the program are better served by rescinding the funds.
Even Senate Democrats are on record supporting rescission efforts. In 2011, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., offered an amendment to an FAA bill that added $44 billion in rescissions to the legislation. It got 81 votes. Senate Democrats such as Jon Tester, Joe Manchin, and Claire McCaskill will have a difficult time explaining to their voters this November why they wouldn’t pass a package one-third the size of the one they supported in 2011 if the Senate fails to take up this vote.
The rescissions from other programs follow the same model as the CHIP funds — they are taxpayer dollars sitting unused on agency doles, collecting dust because their spending authority has outlived its usefulness. There are billions of dollars sitting in a vehicle loan account created in 2007 that hasn’t issued a loan since 2011. Hundreds of millions more languish in funds designated to fight the Ebola outbreak, which the World Health Organization declared abated in 2016.
This story of redundancy and waste is repeated hundreds of millions of times over in federal coffers. These funds identified for rescission do nothing but bloat the balance sheets of programmatic spending, obscuring the true needs and effectiveness of their mission. It is a marvel of modern Washington that a package that is agnostic on the merits of a program can be met with so much avarice.
Transparency in federal finance is a real problem, and the administration’s rescission proposal today only further crystalizes how badly Washington’s spending culture needs to be reformed.
For too long, Congress has neglected its oversight responsibilities in federal spending, allowing agencies far too much latitude in dictating the direction of taxpayer dollars. In theory, agencies should have to answer to the legislative branch — with whom the Constitution vests the power of the purse — why millions of dollars go unused on their accounts. But Congress, unable to even satisfy its own budgeting responsibilities each year, has not exercised this oversight.
Congress should quickly pass Trump’s rescissions package and then turn immediately to righting its own fiscal house. Indeed, lawmakers should be eager to reassert their authority over spending practices, given that the Trump administration has indicated that more rescission efforts are on the horizon.
Some lawmakers have recognized that institutional changes are necessary to get spending under control. House Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers has introduced legislation the past two Congresses called the Unauthorized Spending Accountability Act, which would impel Congress to take back spending authority it has ceded to executive agencies. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., has proposed “reinventing” the budget process so authorizers and appropriators have to work together to plan federal spending, preventing the lapses that allow federal agencies to spend unauthorized funds.
Congress must start operating as a serious steward of taxpayer dollars — after all, there are only so many tools at the president’s disposal to rein in federal spending. Supporting the rescissions package is a good opening salvo for lawmakers serious about tackling Washington’s spending problem, but it addresses the symptom and not the cause of our fiscal problems.
President Trump will be the first president this century to wield a tool many before him have used to decrease the size and scope of government. If Congress acts to restore its constitutional role to provide vigorous oversight of federal spending, maybe he could also be the last.
Mattie Duppler (@MDuppler) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is the senior fellow for fiscal policy at the National Taxpayers Union. She’s also the president of Forward Strategies, a strategic consulting firm.
