Issa Goes Directly to Agencies to Specify Spending Cuts

The top House oversight chairman has plunged into the debate over sequestration by writing to 17 major agencies in search of specific programs or funding streams that could be cut as an alternative to current law’s across-the-board requirement.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter dated March 1, “We cannot avert sequestration without a plan to end the undisciplined and unsustainable federal spending that resulted in the sequester in the first place. Raising taxes on the American people for a second time this year is not the solution to sequestration.”

Chiefs of all major departments, from Defense to State to Interior to Homeland Security, are asked to supply “a targeted list of programmatic spending reductions that would be more beneficial to the American people than across-the-board sequestration; and, a list of programs no longer necessary to meet the goals of the agency.”

Issa is seeking to put into action recommendations his committee has received from inspectors general. On Tuesday, he will hold a hearing on waste, focusing on the Transportation and Education departments.