Congress must follow these new year’s resolutions 

With the end of 2022 in sight, it is time to look forward to 2023, when the members of the 118th Congress will be making their New Year’s resolutions. Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has five ideas for them.   

Stop spending the trillions of dollars that have caused the worst inflation in 40 years and increased the national debt to more than 100 percent of the gross domestic product. Congress could start by taking more seriously the recommendations from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on duplicative and overlapping programs. Savings from the implementation of only 56 percent of these recommendations between 2011 and 2022 total $552 billion, and GAO’s 2022 report suggested that tens of billions more could be saved from moving forward on the outstanding proposals. 

CAGW’s 2022 Prime Cuts report has 555 recommendations that would save $3.9 trillion over five years. Although House Republicans unwisely voted to restore earmarks, Senate Republicans can agree to retain their ban from the 117th Congress. Members of Congress should resolve to hold hearings on every recommendation from every possible source to reduce the size and scope of the federal government and explain to taxpayers why they will not agree to their immediate enactment.

Account for every penny spent for COVID-19 “relief” in the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan Act as well as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Oversight hearings are essential not only for the trillions of dollars allocated through those bills but also for every other federal program. For example, GAO found that there are more than 100 broadband programs across 15 federal agencies, and there are millions of Americans still without broadband access despite $44 billion spent by the federal government on such programs between 2015-2020. Members of Congress must resolve to hold oversight hearings jointly among committees in the House and Senate to determine which existing programs are effective and eliminate those that are ineffective, rather than creating new, duplicative, and wasteful programs that supposedly serve the same purpose.

Don’t spend $80 billion to hire 87,000 new IRS auditors. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) included that funding, which would make the IRS, an agency that cannot answer every phone call and has a backlog of millions of unprocessed tax returns, bigger than the Department of State and FBI combined. The IRA also provided the agency with $15 million to study the feasibility of creating software which would allow the agency to prepare tax returns for all taxpayers, despite wasting $17 billion on the same idea with Cyberfile in 2002. In response to that squandered money, Congress created the Free File Alliance, through which 70 percent of taxpayers can get free help from private sector preparers to file their taxes. Members of Congress should resolve to not appropriate any money for additional IRS agents or a study to create duplicative and unnecessary software.   

Eliminate the price controls on pharmaceuticals. While there were many objectionable provisions in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, none will be as devastating as the price controls on drugs. While the Congressional Budget Office found that price controls would reduce the development of new drugs by 8 percent, resulting in at least 60 lost treatments, an analysis by two University of Chicago economists found that “188 new indications will not get new prevention, treatment, or cures through 2039 … and lead to 331.5 million fewer life years through 2039 … 31 times as large as the 10.7 million life years lost from COVID-19 to date.^” So far, two new drugs that were going through clinical trials, one for cancer and one for a rare eye disease, have been withdrawn due to the provisions of the IRA. Members of Congress should resolve to support legislation like Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-Utah) Protect Drug Innovation Act, which would repeal the price controls in the IRA.   

Restore American energy independence. Too many Americans are being forced to choose between feeding their families and filling up their gas tanks as a result of the Biden administration’s war on fossil fuels. But when prices skyrocketed, rather than asking U.S. producers to pump more oil, President Biden tapped into the national strategic petroleum reserve and went begging for oil from foreign countries, including adversaries like Iran and Venezuela. Members of Congress must resolve to increase energy production in the U.S., peel back burdensome energy regulations, and restore the energy independence that existed before President Biden took office.   

As the current Congress adjourns sine die, everyone should resolve for a better year in 2023, with less government spending, increased oversight over federal programs, reduced energy costs, restored capabilities for innovation in drug treatments and cures, and the elimination of funding for provisions in the IRA to increase the IRS’s audit and enforcement capabilities. That would be a Happy New Year for all taxpayers. 

Tom Schatz is president of CAGW.