Government spending, regulations, and inflation are a tax on all Americans, especially working families who struggle to make ends meet. Prudent fiscal decisions by government can enable American families to flourish without politicians and bureaucrats controlling their lives. The Heritage enterprise will advance a blueprint to reduce the size and scope of the federal government, ensure that government spends less of our money to save us from falling off the fiscal cliff, and stop the growth of federal regulations.
The power of the purse is the backbone of Congress’s authority in the U.S. Constitution and ensures that, especially in a divided government, Congress can prioritize federal spending. A conservative majority in the 118th Congress must exercise this power to a greater extent than ever before. The time to get our fiscal house in order before the next financial crisis is extremely short. Achieving these aggressive goals would restore fiscal sanity to the U.S. government and set the stage for a fiscally conservative presidency in 2025.
The Heritage enterprise will work to reverse the growth of federal spending.
Heritage will work to secure the introduction and passage of a fiscally responsible budget resolution in the House of Representatives in 2023. We will also fight for the introduction of at least 50 of the 200 specific policy recommendations found in Heritage’s Budget Blueprint, which would right-size the federal government so that freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society can flourish.
We will work to prevent omnibus appropriations legislation, which results in more government bloat. Omnibus appropriations allow Congress to consolidate discretionary funding into one massive package and one vote rather than taking the time to debate and take separate votes on individual issues.
We also will develop a coalition to decouple defense and domestic spending, as critically needed defense spending is often held hostage to further increases in domestic spending.
We will work to ban earmarks. Earmarks are funds for pet projects or programs that are often awarded to Members of Congress as favors for votes and can lead to corruption. They fund programs outside the scope of the federal government’s enumerated powers, are not a valid exercise of Congress’s Article I authority, and ultimately end up being another source of wasteful spending.
We will push for House hearings on improper payments in the welfare system as well as hearings on the Paycheck Protection Program and the expansion of unemployment insurance during COVID-19 that often resulted in people getting paid more to stay home than to go to work, even after it was safe to return to work—a key factor in the current employee shortage and supply chain breakdown.
And we will work with the House to set up hearings on Biden Administration appointees who directed federal dollars back to their former places of employment.
We will help Congress pass legislation to reduce inflation.
We will build a sharp contrast between conservatives and President Joe Biden on inflation. That involves working with the House leadership to incorporate only conservative proposals into flagship legislation to combat inflation. That legislation will include key policy recommendations from Heritage’s “Inflation: Policymakers Should Stop Driving It and Start Fighting It.”
We will work to reduce the burden of onerous regulations.
We will disrupt the Biden Administration’s regulatory process by submitting well-researched, substantive comments and objections from Heritage scholars on high-impact regulations. Those comments must be substantively addressed by the agencies proposing the regulations, which will cause their finalization to be delayed. We will also delay implementation by encouraging conservative activists to submit a million comments on select regulations.
In addition, we will expose arbitrary and capricious conduct that occurs as a result of agency regulations, thereby triggering court injunctions.
We will also encourage congressional pushback on regulations by working with the House to pass Congressional Review Act resolutions of disapproval for several onerous regulations. If those resolutions were also passed by the Senate, the regulations would be repealed.
Finally, at the state level, we will build support for opposition to federal regulations, encouraging state attorneys general to file comments and to consider suing over major federal rules.
Heritage provides the knowledge resources to equip lawmakers, state attorneys general, and activists with the information they need to reverse the growth of regulations, spending, and inflation. Select studies from our experts can be found below:
- Budget Blueprint for Fiscal Year 2023
- A Dynamic Score of the Proposals in the Budget Blueprint for Fiscal Year 2023
- Treasury’s Unjustifiable New Foreign Tax Credit Rules Will Cause Double Taxation
- Biden’s Repeal of Permitting Reforms Hinders Infrastructure Improvements
- Statutory PAYGO Presents an Opportunity to Cut Spending
- What the U.S. Should Do Now to Minimize the Risk of Global Food Shortages
- A Revolution, If We Can Keep It: How Anti-NFT Regulations Threaten Financial Rights
- The Biden Administration’s Radical Regulatory Agenda
- SALT Deduction: Debunking the “Moocher State” and Cost-of-Living Justifications
- Taxes in the Build Back Better Act: Five Ways Congress Is Dodging Accountability and Three Ways It Could Take Responsibility
- Inflation: Policymakers Should Stop Driving It and Start Fighting It