President Donald Trump’s administration is urging Congress to halt $15 billion in unspent government funds, including $7 billion from the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a senior administration official said Monday, Bloomberg informed.
The suggestion is a Republican effort to claim fiscal responsibility after a deficit-increasing tax cut and a massive fiscal 2018 spending bill.
It would cancel unspent money from previous years’ children’s health insurance and would have no effect on current programs, the official said. Other unspent funds that would be canceled include $4.3 billion for a vehicle technology program and funds for Obamacare, the 2015 Ebola outbreak and railroad benefits.
The administration aims to follow up with a spending-cut plan that would take money from the current year’s spending bill, the official added.
The $15 billion request is scaled back from the administration’s initial goal of cutting a larger amount of domestic funds from the 2018 bipartisan $1.3 trillion spending bill signed by Trump in March, which has proven unpopular with Republican voters. The goal is to keep Congress from tapping unspent money for new purposes as has happened in the past, the official said.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, said in an interview that he’s open to a spending-cut plan though he hasn’t seen the details.
“If it is frivolous stuff that we can get rid of and save the taxpayer money, then we ought to do it,” Shelby said. He said he doesn’t favor reopening the 2018 spending bill.
“We’ll take a look at it,” said House Republican Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, noting that the plan would address prior-year funds. He had previously said he strongly opposed cutting current-year spending because it would break trust with Democrats and make it harder to reach future spending deals.
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