House Republicans push for freezing spending, extending tax cuts

“The spending cuts would be enacted now, to avert the possibility of Congress using a lame duck session to pass a bloated spending bill for next year after the November elections,” the letter said. 

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) introduced a bill today that would maintain current tax rates through next year. 

McConnell said the bill “ensures that no one in this country will pay higher income taxes next year than they are right now.”

House Appropriations Committee Democrats passed along a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released today showing that extending all tax cuts for two years and cutting non-defense discretionary spending would “require immediate cuts of $102 billion — or 22 percent — in funding for discretionary programs other than defense, homeland security and veterans, as compared to their fiscal 2010 funding levels.”

“This would represent the deepest cut in funding for these programs from one year to the next in recent U.S. history,” the CBPP report stated. 

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) recently announced a plan that would cut spending levels and ensure the Bush-era tax cuts are extended for two years.