The rescissions nonsense

The rescissions nonsense

“Save public media?” More nonsense.

Someone asked me if I knew why federal budgets keep increasing regardless of which party is in power. I replied it was because we never vote out someone who wants to spend more. Since attacking the albatross that is the federal debt is only addressed by taxing more and/or spending less, politicians will do neither. Taxing more may get them booted from office while spending less never resonates with the electorate writ large. In fact, in Washington spending less even if spending more is unpopular. Huh? Consider the times when there were proposals to grow overall spending but at a slower pace. That is, spending will increase but at a decreasing rate. Mathematicians call that a negative second derivative. So instead of spending growing by five percent, if there is a proposal to increase spending by less, say 2 percent, then the cry will be that you are cutting the budget and inducing harm to those who will get less – or not as much. 

Legislators know this and if they do propose cuts, it will be in programs that affect relatively few of their constituents. Have you ever wondered by nationally congress polls among the least liked institutions in the country yet the re-election rate is usually 95 – 98 percent? One of the few times that the rate dipped below 90 percent was in 2010, Obama’s midterm election which was 85 percent and the democrats lost  52 seats. I would not be entirely shocked if the re-election rate in 2026 showed significant losses for the republicans if Trump’s tariffs remain in place.

A perfect example of the games the congress plays in which there is a lot of huffing and puffing, posturing, pontificating and bloviating while accomplishing very little in in today’s rescissions packages. A rescissions package is one where the congress cancels spending that has been previously approved. In that this is strictly budgetary it needs to be approved only by a simple majority vote in both houses. The first bill to be considered rolls back $9.4 billion in spending previously authorized to fund USAID, NPR and PBS. You may recall that the funding for all three was among the early DOGE targets so I won’t go into details here. The left is howling “Savd public media.” What nonsense. NPR gets only one percent of its budget from the feds while PBS gets 13 percent. So this is what all the shouting is about? From all of the whining about Trump and the congress destroying public media, NPR and PBS will do just fine without the few pennies they get from the federal government.

In a $7 trillion budget, the rescissions package is a mere rounding error. But hey, it gives the MAGA crowd something to cheer about and gives the impression however false that the republicans are doing something meaningful. Make that some republicans because some will oppose even these cursory “cuts”. Don Bacon in the house and Susan Collins in the senate oppose some USAID cuts and will oppose the bill. However, both know that regardless of their stance, there will be little likelihood of this particular bill having any impact on their congressional tenure.

Even the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget – which should know better – issued the following statement

“Enacting a rescissions package is a first step toward the major deficit reduction this country needs. We are borrowing nearly $2 trillion annually, on pace to hit record debt within a few years, and the House passed a bill to make the debt $3 trillion worse. Nonetheless, every bit of savings helps.”

Way to go guys! If the committee actually believes this, then the situation is truly hopeless. Instead of urging the congress to take meaningful steps towards addressing the debt by tackling entitlements, this statement basically tells them to keep putting on a show rather than doing something that makes a difference.