Top Trump Econ Adviser: We're Working on Rescinding Parts of $1.3 Trillion Omnibus
White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow confirmed over the weekend that the Trump administration is looking into rescinding portions of the $1.3 trillion omnibus bill passed last month, as the Congressional Budget Office forecasts massive deficits.
When he signed the spending bill, President Donald Trump indicated he did so for the sake of getting badly needed defense spending increases.
“So if we take something for the military, (the Democrats) want something for, in many cases things that are really a wasted sum of money,” Trump said.
“There are a lot of things that I’m unhappy about in this bill,” he added. “There are a lot of things that we shouldn’t have had in this bill, but we were, in a sense, forced — if we want to build our military — we were forced to have.”
On “Fox News Sunday,” Kudlow was asked about White House plans to “undo” parts of the bill, cutting some expenditures through rescission legisiation.
“It’s playing in the White House. My friend,” Kudlow told FNC host Chris Wallace. “(Office of Management and Budget) Director Mick Mulvaney, he and I are on.
“We are looking at an enhanced rescission package. I’m not going to use numbers. This is all around town.”
The former Reagan administration budget official went on to observe, “I think the Republican Party on the Hill has finally figured out that it’s really not a bad idea to trim some spending because, after all, spending can lead to deficits and spending interferes with the economy.”
On Monday, the Congressional Budget Office released a report forecasting deficits topping $1 trillion by 2020, which is two years earlier than previously projected, according to CNBC.
Further, the CBO is predicting a cumulative budget deficit of $1.6 trillion more during the next decade than earlier estimates, due to the impact of the omnibus bill and tax reform.
Fox News Capitol Hill producer Chad Pergram reported that passage rescission legislation is not unprecedented, but is a “rocky road.”
“The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 permits lawmakers and the president to take a mulligan on appropriations if everyone suffers from buyer’s remorse. Lawmakers may then vote to ‘rescind’ certain chunks of money,” Pergram wrote.
In 1995, then-President Bill Clinton signed a $16 billion rescission bill, in the wake of the “Republican Revolution” that sweep the GOP to power in the House and the Senate for the first time since the 1950s.
A first step is for the Trump administration to submit a list to Congress of proposed cuts. The House Appropriations Committee must then craft the legislation.
Congress has 45 days to approve any or all rescission requests from the president.
Unlike last month’s omnibus spending bill, only a simple majority is required in the Senate (in addition to the House) to move the bill to Trump’s desk for signature.
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