What now for spending restraint? Romina Boccia writes:
The Maximizing America’s Prosperity Act—or MAP Act—is a bill proposed by Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., that would limit federal spending to a fixed portion of the economy, adjusted for economic conditions.
The bill would enforce that spending limit by triggering automatic spending cuts when Congress fails to abide by the cap. The spending cap would then be slowly lowered year by year to achieve budget balance.
The end goal of this bill is to get federal spending back down to the level of federal revenue. This would bring the country leaps and bounds closer to the lean federal budget we need and toward finally stabilizing the debt.
The MAP Act builds off the best parts of the 2011 Budget Control Act and would correct some of its shortcomings, such as broadening the scope of spending that can be cut and doing away with the defense/nondefense bifurcation.
The Budget Control Act was limited by the fact that its spending caps only applied to about one-third of the federal budget—discretionary spending—while nondiscretionary (or mandatory) spending was allowed to continue growing unabated. In addition, it placed separate caps on defense and nondefense spending, creating incentives to lift the caps on both sides.
Spending on mandatory programs like health care and retirement are the real drivers of growth in our deficits and debt. By largely exempting these programs from spending limits and cuts, the Budget Control Act failed to address a structural defect that continues to plague our budget.
The MAP Act takes a better approach. It would fold all spending that isn’t interest on the debt under a single spending cap.
This would address both problems with the Budget Control Act. By making all programs subject to cuts, it would increase the likelihood of Congress agreeing on a savings package even though it may contain some things different lawmakers may not like.
In addition, the MAP Act would take important steps to account for the laws or provisions that require private actors, states, or local governments to spend their own money to carry out federal programs.
The MAP Act would subtract these unfunded mandates from the spending caps, preventing politicians from pushing spending binges off the federal balance sheet onto other entities, like states.
[Romina Boccia, “Here’s a Promising Plan to Finally Get a Grip on Federal Spending,” The Daily Signal, July 25]
