Issue Analysis 105

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here today to discuss the importance of government reform and the need to provide American taxpayers an honest accounting of government activity. My name is Scott A. Hodge, and I am the director of tax and budget policy at Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation (CSE Foundation), a 250,000-member nonpartisan, non-profit consumer advocacy group that recruits, educates, trains, and mobilizes hundreds of thousands of volunteer activists to fight for less government, lower taxes, and more freedom.1

On Tuesday, March 14, 2000, Alabama CSE held its second annual Day at the Capital. The day focused on this year's judicial elections and the issue of school choice, with over 160 attendees plus other interested guests - more than double last year's attendance! Participants traveled from over 20 Alabama cities, with many coming in by buses or vans. Highlights from CSE Day included:

Republican House and Senate leaders are under tremendous pressure from Bill Clinton and many of their colleagues to bust the discretionary spending caps established by the 1997 balanced budget agreement. But the leadership has a weapon that, if they are willing to use it, could undermine many of Clinton’s pet initiatives while tempering the spending frenzy of their colleagues. All the leadership needs to do is enforce the congressional rules that prohibit spending money on unauthorized programs.

A new report by the House Budget Committee Majority details longstanding waste throughout the federal government. The report, "Reviving the Reform Agenda," aims to renew congressional focus on accountability in the spending of taxpayer dollars. According to the report “Federal programs continue to waste billions of dollars annually through longstanding, systemic problems that persist – and in some cases are growing worse – despite repeated warnings from the Government’s principal watchdogs, the General Accounting Office [GAO] and the inspectors general [IG] of government agencies.”

Part I Squandering the Surplus, Threatening Medicare Clinton’s tax cut plan returns less than 23 percent of the $746 billion surplus back to taxpayers, leaving roughly $580 billion for the administration’s other priorities. Their plan dedicates these remaining funds for spending on new entitlement programs and for buying down publicly held debt under the guise of extending Medicare’s solvency.

With the releases of his budget for fiscal 2001 today, Bill Clinton is challenging the Republican Congress to "do more." Mr. Clinton is raising the ante on the fearful Republicans by proposing more than $1.8 trillion in spending for next year, including hundreds of expensive, poll-tested initiatives to benefit every liberal interest group under the sun. But before the congressional leadership takes the bait, they should first ask Clinton, and his hand-picked successor Al Gore, to explain why their administration cannot account for the money they already are spending.

The Clinton administration claims that its $1.84 trillion budget for FY 2001 is a “balanced and fiscally responsible” framework to retire debt, secure Social Security and Medicare, cut taxes, and invest in key priorities. Behind the rhetoric, however, the numbers show that Bill Clinton is proposing a massive increase in the size of government, a trivial amount of tax relief, and a phony scheme to extend the lives of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. If enacted, the president’s FY 2001 budget would mean:

CSE RESPONSE TO THE CLINTON STATE OF THE UNION: NO GORE TAXES!!! CONCORD – In his final State of the Union address last night, President Clinton claimed credit for the economic prosperity being enjoyed by this nation. He then turned around and proposed big government spending and regulatory schemes – all of which would not only take more money out of the pockets of Americans, but also put the brakes on our thriving economy.