Rep. Tom Graves (R, GA-14) is a co-sponsor of President Trump’s proposal to cut $15.35 billion in spending. The cuts have been introduced as the Spending Cuts to Expired and Unnecessary Programs Act (H.R. 3). The bill would utilize “a special legislative tool called ‘rescissions,’ which the Senate is able to pass on a simple majority vote, that takes back or ‘rescinds’ funds Congress previously appropriated.
Graves stated: “President Trump’s rescissions package takes a bush hog to the spending underbrush. Every dollar in this package either can’t or won’t get spent for the purpose it was budgeted. It’s good government and a big win for the American people. I look forward to working with the Trump administration to move this package across the finish line.”
Graves highlighted six of the 38 cuts listed in the bill (see link above for the full list) in a press release:
- Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program (Energy): A $4.3 billion rescission of funds that have been untouched since 2011. Since ATVM’s inception in 2007, only five loans have been closed under this authority.
- Title 17 Innovative Technology Loan Guarantee Program (Energy): A rescission of $523 million in unobligated balances dating back to the stimulus that were provided for energy loan guarantees. The authority to make new guarantees lapsed in 2011.
- Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (HHS): A rescission of $800 million that is in excess of the funds needed by the Innovation Center in FYs 2018 and 2019. In 2020, CMMI will receive a new mandatory appropriation of $10 billion.
- Ebola Response (USAID): A rescission of $252 million in excess funds remaining from the initial Ebola outbreak in 2015; the World Health Organization declared the end of the Ebola epidemic in 2016.
- Railroad Unemployment Insurance Extended Benefits (RRB): A rescission of $133 million in unobligated balances for a program that expired in 2012.
- Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (Department of Agriculture): A rescission of $148 million, including funds for responding to disease outbreaks that are now resolved (e.g., the highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak in 2015).