Taxpayer advocate proposes spending cuts

House Republicans said recently that a vow to lop $100 billion off the federal budget this year was based on the idea that President Obama’s budget would be passed. But they also said they continue to plan on seeking significant rollbacks in discretionary spending — though not in defense expenditures. 

Meanwhile, the biggest single cut proposed by Taxpayers for Common Sense was in defense-related spending — a $35 billion reduction for nuclear weapons. In all, the group proposed making the biggest cuts to defense and agriculture — $52 billion apiece. 

The group also says four of its proposed trims — the cut in nuclear weapon spending, as well as to a tax credit for ethanol, commodity crop subsidies and an interstate tunnel project in southern California — would save more than $10 billion apiece, and combined cut close to $100 billion in spending over those five years. 

In a letter to congressional leaders, Ryan Alexander, Taxpayers for Common Sense’s president, wrote that the group was proposing spending cuts in areas that had been seen as off-limits, such as defense, and doing away with tax provisions it thought were ineffectual.

“We believe in the power and possibility of government to be part of the solution, and that government taxation and spending should produce the best possible return on investment for taxpayers, or be cut,” Alexander wrote.