Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee introduces bill to cap spending

January 31st, 2011 | by Velma Orr |

WASHINGTON — Saying Washington needs to be placed in a “legislative straightjacket” and be forced to reduce spending, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., introduced a bill Tuesday setting a 10-year target for lowering federal spending based on the size of the economy.

The bill, themitment to Prosperity Act, would cap all spending — both discretionary and mandatory, including Social Security and Medicare — to a declining percentage of the Gross Domestic Product.

The targeted level would be the 40-year average of 20.6 percent of the GDP. Currently, spending has reached 24.7 percent, much of it from borrowing. Congress is expected to take up raising the debt ceiling ining weeks.

Under the bill, a targeted cap would be established each year, beginning in 2013, and if Congress doesn’t meet the goal, the Office of Management and Budget would be automatically authorized to sequester funds and bring spending down to the specified target. The effective first-year cap would be 22.25 percent.

It would take a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress to override the cap.

“Cutting trillions of dollars from the federal budget in theing years won’t be easy or painless; it will require backbone and discipline on the part of policy makers and shared sacrifice for the country,” Corker said in a prepared statement. “I believe Americans will be willing to make short-term sacrifices for the long-term good of our country and demandmensurate actions from their elected officials.”

Corker has been shopping the idea of the CAP Act around Tennessee for the past several months. Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., are among the co-sponsors of the bill. There is no current House sponsor.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who has introduced across-the-board spending cut legislation over the years, has already introduced bills calling for 5, 10 and 15 percent cuts in discretionary spending, exempting the Veterans Administration, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.

Freshmen Reps. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn., and Alan Nunnelee, R-Miss., have said they were sent to Washington to cut spending.

Steve Ellis, a spokesman for Taxpayers formon Sense, a government watchdog group, said the Corker-McCaskill bill is a “much more thoughtful” version of the across-the-board spending proposals the think tank typically does not endorse.

He said accounting for Social Security and Medicare spending, rather than masking their impacts, was an attractive feature of the proposal.

But he also said setting spending limits based on GDP does not get rid of deficits since the plan doesn’t call for a balance of spending and revenue.

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