Rep. Calvert Votes for Bipartisan Budget Agreement

Today, Congressman Ken Calvert (CA-42) voted for the Bipartisan Budget Agreement that reduces the deficit by $23 billion while establishing discretionary spending levels for Fiscal Year 2014 and 2015. The agreement was approved in the House of Representatives by a vote of 332 to 94.

"The Budget Agreement passed by the House today is a step in the right direction in addressing our unsustainable fiscal path," said Rep. Calvert. "The agreement reduces the deficit by $23 billion more than if Congress had done nothing and simply let the government operate on autopilot. I am a strong believer that the American people deserve a budget and appropriations process that is debated, legislated and negotiated in the halls of Congress – not in the dark corners of the Obama administration bureaucracy."

"Today, we have established the framework for the Appropriations Committee to complete its work on the Fiscal Year 2014 spending bills and advance the priorities we believe in. I am hopeful that the bipartisan, bicameral nature of the agreement will pave the way for long overdue negotiations that will tackle the rapidly rising costs of our mandatory spending programs and our outdated tax code."

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 would set overall discretionary spending for the current fiscal year at $1.012 trillion—about halfway between the Senate budget level of $1.058 trillion and the House budget level of $967 billion. The agreement would provide $63 billion in sequester relief over two years, split evenly between defense and non-defense programs. In Fiscal Year 2014, defense discretionary spending would be set at $520.5 billion, and non-defense discretionary spending would be set at $491.8 billion.

The sequester relief is fully offset by savings elsewhere in the budget. The agreement includes dozens of specific deficit-reduction provisions, with mandatory savings and non-tax revenue totaling $85 billion. The agreement would reduce the deficit by $23 billion.

Below are the most notable examples:

(Provided by the House Budget Committee)

Eliminate waste

• Stop paying Medicaid bills that dead-beat dads and insurance companies should cover. That's a $1.4 billion spending cut.
• Stop sending unemployment checks to criminals. That's just common sense.
• Stop sending government checks to dead people. There's no reason to tolerate fraud.

Stop favoritism

• End the special treatment for non-profit student-loan servicers. We're paying too much, and these groups should compete for our business—fair and square. That would save $3 billion.
• End corporate welfare.

- Some energy companies use the federal government like a bank. They deposit extra cash and earn well above market interest rates. By addressing this problem, we can save $750 million.

- Repeal a government research program for private energy companies. That's a $40 million cut.

Real reforms

• The federal government makes trillions of dollars of empty promises to retirees. And these empty promises not only drive the debt; they also threaten the retirement security of current and future seniors.
• This agreement starts to address the problem.
• We make sensible reforms for civilian and military retirement programs.

- On the civilian side, we ask future retirees to contribute a little bit more — still well below what's common for state and local government employees — so taxpayers don't have to pick up the entire tab.

- And for younger military retirees, we trim their cost-of-living adjustment just a bit. It's a modest reform for working-age military retirees.

• Taxpayers shouldn't have to bail out private companies' pension benefits. That's why we ask private companies to cover more of the cost of guaranteeing their pension benefits. That would protect taxpayers and save $7.9 billion.
• Mandatory spending is where the problem is. This agreement extends the mandatory sequester for two more years, which cuts $28 billion and rightly focuses on the source of the problem.

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