At The Weekly Standard, Chris Deaton writes that the White House’s plan to cut $15.4 billion in spending “is a drop in a bucket floating on a sea” — and the real amount it would lop off the deficit is an estimated $3 billion. The other $12 billion “comes from a combination of expired, zombie funds still on the books, and budget authority that was untapped as of May.”
More from Deaton:
"House majority leader Kevin McCarthy wrote this week in the Washington Examiner that the de facto $3-billion rescission amounted to 'a much-needed spring cleaning.' Perhaps—of one corner of one room in a rather large mansion. … [F]or any simple argument of accountability, efficiency, or transparency, there is a larger and better argument for not passing $1.3 trillion budgets harum-scarum in the first place. Doing so is the result of Congress lacking an orderly budget and appropriations process—which is to say nothing of Washington lacking a spine to make Medicare and Social Security sustainable in the long run. There is an irony here: Defining fiscal responsibility down to rescinding money that never was going to be spent and sounding the alarm of an impending debt crisis are unmistakably related."