From WSJopinion: If the new Republican majority can pass its own funding bills, they can define the differences between the parties and win the spending debate, write Phil Gramm and Mike Solon
. That is $356 billion, or 25%, more than the pre-pandemic 2020 appropriation of $1.4 trillion. Adding entitlements and mandatory spending, including the Chips Act and the mandatory spending provisions of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, will increase total 2023 spending to $5.9 trillion, $1.3 trillion above the pre-pandemic level.
In May, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that government spending in 2023 would be 22.5% of gross domestic product, down from its estimate of 23.8% of GDP for 2022 spending. Actual 2022 spending hit 25.1% of GDP. The CBO projections didn’t include the billions of dollars in spending in the Inflation Reduction Act or the roughly $150 billion Democrats are expected to seek for an omnibus spending bill in the lame-duck session.
Since the 1983 bipartisan Social Security reform, no major entitlement reform has occurred that wasn’t bipartisan. Democrats, including Speaker Tip O’Neill, supported entitlement reform only when discretionary spending was significantly restrained. Not only does restraining discretionary spending generate the political credibility necessary to reform entitlements, it pressures both parties into supporting entitlement reform.
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