Analysis of House Democrats’ Recommendations to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction
The Budget Control Act calls on congressional committees to provide recommendations to the newly formed deficit reduction committee, or “Super Committee,” by October 14th. That day having come and gone, we can examine how seriously this effort was pursued.
The Budget Control Act merely states that committees “may transmit to the joint committee its recommendations for changes in law to reduce the deficit.” Any time a law states that an entity “may” do something, it’s a license to phone it in – and that’s pretty much what we got from Congress. On the Senate side, the majority side of the Finance Committee opted not to submit anything at all. And why should they? It’s not like the nation’s tax system and major entitlements are in their jurisdiction. Oh. Wait. Ditto the Republicans on House Ways and Means.
Contrast that approach with House Democrats. To their credit, the minority members of every house committee of jurisdiction transmitted recommendations to the Super Committee.
A detailed analysis of the sum efforts of the various House minority recommendations reveals that there were 129 discrete proposals from the committees. Of these, 16 percent were spending increases or revenue reductions, 25 percent were tax increases, 41 percent were spending reductions, and 18 percent had no appreciable budget effect.
Each proposal was characterized as either a spending or tax expenditure increase, an increase in receipts, a spending reduction, or as having no deficit impact. Committees were taken at their word as to estimated effects. Many proposals had unknown budgetary effects, but were asserted to reduce the deficit in some way and were characterized as such.
Summary of Findings
Spending Increase/Revenue Loss
Extend UI Benefits
School/Infrastructure (American Jobs Act)
Water Projects
And 18 More Spending Increase/Revenue Loss Proposals
Tax/Receipts Increase
Millionaire's Surtax (American Jobs Act)
Impose Bank Fee
Raise Taxes on Oil and Gas Companies
And 30 more Tax/Receipts Increases
Spending Savings
Cancel Osprey Aircraft
Rescind Unobligated Balances
Require Higher Rebates from Drug Companies
And 50 More Spending Reductions
No Budget Effect
"Recognize" the Affordable Care Act
Don’t Cut Oversight Funding
Amend PAYGO for the Postal Service
And 20 more Proposals that Don’t Affect the Budget
Note: Does not Sum to 129 because the tax increases and spending increases in the American Jobs Act were counted as half of a proposal to reflect their nature as components of a broader proposal.
The findings are necessarily skewed by the number of proposals. A recommendation with minimal savings is counted as equal to a proposal to raise $1.5 trillion in taxes. This approach takes the committees’ recommendations at face-value and seeks to do no more than summarize the totality of the offerings. With one third of the Committee’s recommendations proposing to either do nothing or worsen the deficit, it seems clear that many committees did not take the goal of deficit reduction seriously. That the Ways and Means Committee went out of its way to exclude major entitlements from savings is telling and suggests that while 41 percent of the specific proposals offered were spending savings, if they don’t apply to major entitlements, they won’t add up to much.
That many of the proposals did not reduce the deficit evidently was not a hindrance to recommending them to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. For instance, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee proposed new spending for surface transportation, the FAA, and water projects. The Judiciary Committee proposed increased COPS funding, and enactment of the DREAM Act. Not exactly a pathway to a balanced budget.
Other committees offered little more than statements of principles without any obvious recommendations for changes in policy falling under the committee’s jurisdiction.
If eighty percent of success is just showing up, then House Democrats get a B- for just knowing how to lick a stamp. But, substance should also matter, and on this front, the effort was quite uneven.
One could argue that standards were set pretty low, and House Democrats met them, while some others didn’t bother. When the Super Committee votes on its own recommendations by November 23rd, as it “shall” do by law, the bar will be much higher. Let’s hope they clear it.
