OPINION:
As Congress staggers into its 14th month of political circus and brinkmanship governance, Americans are left reckoning with the realities of a $34 trillion national debt and the march of totalitarianism abroad.
Last week Advancing American Freedom, a nonprofit conservative advocacy group, released a blueprint for dealing with both problems simultaneously. It outlines how Congress can adopt the House’ conservatives plan to cut domestic spending by 8%, support our allies with lethal aid, and save billions of dollars, all while fully funding our military.
The plan would use a full-year continuing resolution to cut nondefense discretionary spending and allocate those savings to fund lethal aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
Once again, the American people are prepared to watch Congress conduct a shutdown food fight between hard-line progressives who refuse to cut any domestic spending, bipartisan defense hawks who want to see military spending grow, and the isolationist right, which mostly wants to limit aid to Ukraine.
Initial offers and counteroffers have been exchanged and shot down by both sides of the aisle over the past year or so while Congress’ newest creation, the “short-term ladder continuing resolution,” has proved to be nothing more than a way of kicking the can down the road with extra steps.
Conservatives are typically right to be skeptical about such a resolution since they generally fund everything conservatives campaign against every year. A continuing resolution in the current landscape, however, would be a definitive win for conservatives. Nondefense discretionary spending hasn’t been cut by this much since the Reagan administration.
The simple reality is that with a GOP-controlled House and Democratic-controlled Senate and Oval Office, neither party (or factions of those parties) can govern unilaterally.
Last year, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy signed his political death warrant by passing the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Maligned at the time but crucial now, the law contains provisions requiring cuts to nondefense discretionary spending while protecting spending on defense and veterans programs if a continuing resolution is passed for the rest of the fiscal year.
This automatic cut creates $73 billion in savings in the first year, which is more than enough to cover the lethal aid provisions of Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick’s bipartisan Defending Borders, Defending Democracies Act. The cuts, paired with lethal aid to our allies facing down authoritarianism, result in billions of dollars in savings for Americans.
As former Vice President Mike Pence stated in his National Review op-ed: “We don’t need to choose between being Leader of the Free World and solving problems here at home. We can do both and have done both for generations. Anyone who says otherwise has a pretty small view of the greatest nation on earth.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson should take up Advancing American Freedom’s plan to cut spending, support our allies, and keep our government from heading into yet another shutdown. While no faction of either party will be completely satisfied, the plan takes modest steps toward resolving two of the most existential threats to the American way of life: skyrocketing federal debt and totalitarianism abroad.
• Marc Short is the co-chair of Advancing American Freedom, former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, and President Donald Trump’s legislative affairs director.
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