Trump Targets the Schumer Excuse GOP Senate moderates may have to cut spending after all. James Freeman
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-targets-the-schumer-excuse-1525719078?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=4&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s
Taxpayers should soon be receiving some good news from Washington. President Donald Trump and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) appear to have found a way to enact modest federal spending restraint, despite resistance from some GOP senators. Faced with a number of Republicans who claim they cannot repeal their 2018 spending surge because they made a deal with Democrats, Mr. Trump and House GOP leaders instead aim to cut funding approved in previous years. This amounts to billions of dollars that bureaucrats never got around to spending, and now perhaps they never will.
The idea that Republicans were honor-bound to continue all the spending that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) recently extracted probably makes little sense to those outside of government. This is especially true because, to secure his new budget buster, Mr. Schumer had to break his own previous agreement with Republicans to abide by reasonable limits on discretionary spending.
The opportunity to impose some small measure of discipline now exists because spending rules make it easier to rescind federal spending than to approve it in the first place. Republicans needed 60 votes on the first go-round so they had to deal with Mr. Schumer unless they wanted another government shutdown. The result exceeded the 2018 and 2019 spending caps under the Budget Control Act by a total of nearly $300 billion. CONTINUE AT SITE
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