Rep. Mack outlines plan to freeze spending, cut 1 percent a year

Mack said several senators, including Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), support the bill, H.R. 1848, and that 57 members in the House have co-sponsored it.

“It’s growing, people are coming to me every day,” Mack said of the growing co-sponsorship of his bill, adding that centrist Republicans as well as conservative Republicans are supporting it. On whether a Democrat would support it, he predicted: “I think we’ll get there.”

Mack’s bill would go beyond the requirement in the debt-ceiling agreement to cut up to $1.5 trillion in planned government spending over the next decade. He said his bill would cut $7.5 trillion, and said these would be real cuts, not the “fantasy cuts” in the debt-ceiling deal.

Mack and other conservatives have argued that the debt deal only cuts a few billion dollars in real spending, and mostly makes cuts to planned government spending several years from now.