CAGW s Prime Cuts documents pork, bureaucratic excess, corporate welfare, and poorly managed, obsolete, or duplicative programs. These funds must be spent every year. These mandatory spending programs accounted for 55 percent of the entire federal budget in fiscal 1999, further proof that the current budget process fails to control spending. In addition, payments on interest on the debt accounted for another 13 percent of the budget. More than two thirds of the budget goes to entitlements and interest on the debt.
Many entitlement programs are rife with waste, fraud and abuse.
Raising taxes and relying on the increased revenue to balance the budget will only enhance the taxpayers distrust of the federal government. Heavy reliance on taxes is like a time bomb waiting to go off. If the country is hit with a recession, the government will no longer be able to count on its supply of revenue. The decision to increase taxes to pay for new programs, instead of cutting spending, will explode in legislators faces, creating a huge budget deficit. It is unfair, furthermore, to expect hard working Americans to shoulder the load of an ever-expanding government.