This morning, the AP reports,
despite coming under daily assault from Republicans over spending, the Obama administration is pushing a $20 billion-plus pre-election shopping list on its Democratic allies in Congress as they prepare must-pass legislation to prevent a government shutdown next month.
The AP adds that with “Republicans . . . protesting the spending requests,” the White House’s “wish list appears to be an overreach given political anxiety among Democrats over spending with midterm elections to determine whether they maintain control of Congress just seven weeks away.”
This is one of the many reasons that the new Cato Institute spending initiative is great. Check out the institute’s full-page ad on the initiative, which ran today in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, here.
When I asked Cato’s Chris Edwards about the ad and the cuts he e-mailed me the following:
These cuts may seem ambitious, but as the government’s debt crisis worsens over the next 5 or 10 years, Congress will have to make major cuts like these. Besides, each proposed cut in itself promotes growth, prosperity, and individual freedom, and that is ultimately the path that Americans will choose.
And please forward Cato’s ideas on how to cut spending to your friends, your elected officials, your would-be elected officials, and other concerned citizens. Forward especially to everyone who claims that free-market advocates do not have concrete proposals about how to restore fiscal responsibility in the federal government.