Budget

Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) introduced a bipartisan bill on Tuesday requiring that any leftover money from lawmakers' office accounts go directly to paying down the federal debt, instead of being returned to the Treasury for other government spending.

"With the national debt now topping $14 trillion Congress must scour and scrutinize all spending, and that begins with our own congressional office budgets," Nelson said. 

Currently, unspent funds go back to the Treasury. The bill will capture unused funds and direct them straight to deficit and debt reduction.

The House on Tuesday approved a measure intended to set austere budget goals for the current fiscal year. 

The Obama administration offered its strong opposition Tuesday to GOP legislation ending federal funding of presidential campaigns. 

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) late Monday estimated that a bill eliminating taxpayer funding for presidential elections would save $617 million over the next 10 years.

H.R. 359 is due on the House floor this week and will be debated in the Rules Committee on Tuesday morning. It amends federal law to end the option on income tax forms to earmark part of one's taxes for the Presidential Election Campaign Fund (PECF). It would also shut the fund and transfer remaining balances to the Treasury.

The bill is opposed by good-government groups, which argue that eliminating the option of forgoing private funds in the general-election campaign in order to take federal funds would drive candidates further into the hands of lobbyists.

The CBO estimates that the bill would save $215 million in the 2012 election cycle.

For the 2008 presidential election cycle, outlays from the PECF totaled $135 million, the CBO states, even though President Obama ultimately opted out of using $85 million in federal funds.

Acceptance of federal funds forces candidates to agree not to use private donations in the fall campaign, thereby effectively capping the amount they can spend. McCain in the 2008 campaign blasted Obama for pledging to use federal funds and then abandoning his pledge.

Two Democratic Senators praised news reports on Monday that President Obama won't propose raising the retirement age or reducing Social Security benefits in his State of the Union address. 

During a conference call with reporters, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he was pleased to hear that the president won't propose either during his speech Tuesday night despite being included as main components of his fiscal deficit commission. 

"I think for the tens and tens of millions of American workers and for senior citizens, that is very welcome news," Sanders said. "So I applaud the president for standing up for Social Security, for his understanding that this is a program that has worked fantastically well for 75 years, and that he is going to defend it."

The House Budget panel's second-ranking Republican is pressing his leadership to keeps its promise to cut $100 billion in non-defense discretionary spending for the remainder of this year and reduce spending to fiscal 2008 levels. 

Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) sent a letter signed by 89 of the 176 members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC) to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Monday urging him to stick with the GOP's initial cost-cutting vow that helped the GOP win control of the House last fall. 

"Despite the added challenge of being four months into the current fiscal year, we still must keep our $100 billion pledge to the American people," the letter said. "They represent a credible down payment on the fiscally responsible measures that will be needed to get the nation’s finances back on track."

Thirty-three members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have sent a letter ahead of Tuesday's State of the Union speech to President Obama urging him not to propose cuts to Social Security. 

Liberals are afraid that Obama will try to tackle entitlement reform this year and agree to proposals that would pare back benefits.

The Jan. 20 letter was released publicly on Monday when MoveOn.org asked supporters to call President Obama and ask him to take cuts to Social Security off the table.

Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker is calling for a 5 percent cut in the Senate budget, following the House's path earlier this month.

Ahead of President Obama's State of the Union address, Wicker plans to introduce a resolution on Tuesday that would cut the Senate's budget, he told Fox News on Monday. 

He has already cut his personal office's budget by 5 percent and is pushing for Senate leadership to follow the lead of the House, which approved a resolution that cuts all House budgets by 5 percent, saving about $35 million. That resolution passed the House on a 410-13 vote on Jan. 6. 

If all Senate offices cut their budgets by 5 percent it would save an additional $20 million, Wicker said. 

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Last year, then-House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said military salaries, not just civilian federal government salaries, should be frozen in order to help reduce the budget deficit. This year, Minority Whip Hoyer appears to be less willing to rush to judgment, even though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just released a study that would seem to bolster arguments in favor of a cut in military pay.

CBO last week released an eight-page report that said the median cash compensation for enlisted personnel with no college degree is "at least as high as the 75th percentile of earnings for federal workers with comparable work experience."

"In other words, the typical enlisted person receives more cash compensation than three-quarters of comparable federal civilians," according to the report, which Hoyer requested. It also found that compensation for commissioned officers with college degrees is even higher.

Despite these findings, a spokeswoman indicated Hoyer is not yet ready to push for reduced military pay.

"This is part of Mr. Hoyer's larger effort to assemble information on the state of federal and military pay, and he has not made any judgments at this point," Katie Grant told The Hill.

The Washington Post editorial page on Monday morning called on President Obama to get specific in the State of the Union with a plan to tackle the national debt and said that so far, the editorial board is not persuaded Obama is serious about the problem.

“Time is running out for Mr. Obama to propose those hard choices and, more important, to fight for their adoption and implementation. We do not doubt the sincerity of his concern about the nation's precarious fiscal state. But we remain unpersuaded, and increasingly concerned, about the seriousness of his resolve to do something about it,” the editorial states.

It states that conservatives are wrong to insist on massive cuts right away, since this would endanger the economic recovery, but liberals are wrong to keep entitlements off the table. It calls on Obama to hew a middle path.

“Sensible adjustments now will avoid the need for greater injury later and can be accomplished in a way that protects those in greatest need. Mr. Obama has, so far, been willing to say ... none of this,” the editors write.” On the contrary, the default impulse has been to solve political differences by taking out the checkbook: an extension of tax cuts for the wealthy here, a payroll tax holiday there.”