THE DAILY FED
Heritage Hacks Again
In familiar springtime fashion, the Heritage Foundation has released a report recommending hundreds of billions of dollars in budget cuts, along with a sweeping reorganization and drastic downsizing of the federal bureaucracy, The Washington Post reported today.
The foundation, a conservative think tank, yesterday released a 450-page proposal to cut and restructure executive operations that would cut $510 billion from spending over five years, Heritage budget experts estimate.
More than half of the cuts would come from civilian agencies. The Defense Department would gain $123 billion under the plan and Social Security would remain untouched. Taxpayers would reap a net tax cut of $193 billion.
The Heritage recommendations include a reorganization of the Cabinet, reducing the number of Cabinet-level agencies from 14 to five.
"As long as lawmakers tread cautiously where popular programs like Medicare are concerned, cuts in the rest of the budget will largely go unnoticed," Heritage budget expert Grover M. Hermann said.
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