White House: there will be more spending cuts requests to come
– By W. James Antle III (washingtonexaminer.com) / May 7 2018
The Trump administration announced Monday night that the spending cuts the president will send to Congress on Tuesday will be followed by additional rounds in the future — including a rescission package targeting the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill Congress passed in March.
First President Trump will send over a request for $15 billion in cuts to unallocated funds that had previously been appropriated. But senior administration officials told reporters on a Monday evening conference call that they wanted to reacquaint lawmakers with presidential rescission requests as “a very important tool” for cutting spending after it went unused under the previous two administrations.
“This is the largest rescission package ever proposed by the the president,” a senior administration official said of the $15 billion package on its way to Congress. The package seeks to rescind $4.3 Energy Department’s loan program for Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing, as well as $7 billion in funds for Children’s Health Insurance Program that the administration says can no longer be spent.
But some conservatives had hoped the Trump team would try to rescind some of the spending in the controversial omnibus bill and pursue cuts in the range of $60 billion.
Senior administration officials denied that this was ever under consideration this go-around. “This was never a $60 billion package,” one official said. “That was not true.”
But the Trump administration did describe this as a large rescission package requesting cuts that could potentially gain bipartisan support — and pave the way to future uses of this tool to pursue additional spending cuts in the future, including “the things that we find wasteful and ineffective” in the omnibus.
“These are provisions that in our view are not especially controversial, this is money that is just sitting out there,” said a senior administration officials.
The precedent is just as important, however.
“We want to make sure the muscle memory behind this process is remembered by Washington,” a senior official said.
Officials more than once quoted an April comment by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md.: “I wouldn’t irrationally oppose a rescission which said we have had money lying in an account that has not been spent for one, two, three years. We shouldn’t just have it sitting in that account.”
The officials also noted that Democratic senators — specifically naming Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jon Tester of Montana, two vulnerable incumbents up for reelection this year and targeted for defeat by the president — have supported rescission for unallocated spending in the past.
Hoyer did in his April comments express skepticism about using rescission to “negate” agreed upon spending in the omnibus.
Rescission is a process by which the president asks Congress to rescind funds previously appropriated. Lawmakers then have a total of 45 days to act. It was last utilized during the Clinton administration, although Congress regularly approves rescission packages on its own without a presidential request.
“Only the last two presidents haven’t used it,” said a senior administration official of the process, which has existed in its current form since 1974. The spending cuts can pass with simple majority support in both houses and are not subject to Senate filibusters.
No word was given on how large future rescission packages would be, though an administration official predicted they would ultimately exceed President Reagan’s $43 billion total.
