Responding to a challenge from President Obama, House Republican leaders on Thursday unveiled a plan to slice $375 billion out of the federal budget over the next five years. The proposal seeks to accomplish this by capping non-defense spending at the rate of inflation and requiring that any bailout money repaid to the Treasury be dedicated to deficit reduction.
Aside from those two big-ticket items, House GOP leaders came up with less than $25 billion in actual program reductions and terminations over the next five years, or about $5 billion in cuts per annum -- less than a third of the $17 billion in program reductions and terminations that Obama has proposed for the fiscal year that begins in October.
The GOP plan -- which would rid the federal government of the office of the Treasurer, cut a program dedicated to creating safe school routes, and bar federal employees from getting paid for full-time union work, for example -- was greeted with derision by analysts dedicated to reducing the size of government.
