Earlier this week, lawmakers on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees introduced six spending bills that will fund the government through the end of the year. In a press release, Republicans on the House committee boasted that the bills would “save taxpayers more than $200 billion over the next ten years” — a period of time over which the Congressional Budget Office expects the national debt will expand by 20 trillion dollars and then disappear. the nation’s gross domestic product.
Some of these savings come from cuts to federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Unfortunately, even these cuts are much more modest than they appear.
In their press release, House Republicans boasted that the appropriations package “uses the power of the purse to confront the weaponization of growing bureaucracy within the FBI and ATF.” Specifically, they do so by “reversing [ATF’s] anti-Second Amendment overreach… significantly reducing its overall funding by $122 million, a 7% decrease” from 2023, as well as holding the FBI “accountable for targeting everyday Americans by reducing its overall operating budget of $654 million and cutting its construction bill by 95%.”
But these already meager cuts don’t involve many actual cuts.
FBI salaries and expenses totaled more than $10 billion in 2023 and requested more than $11 billion for 2024; The appropriations bill would grant $10.6 billion: a little less than the FBI wanted, but only about half less than last year’s budget and certainly nothing close to the 6 percent cut. that the Republicans boasted about.
Republicans get around this problem with some complicated math: In a 2022 omnibus spending bill, the Bureau received $652 million to build a campus in Huntsville, Alabama. Republicans include the $652 million when they advertise a 6% cut, even though the money earmarked for salaries and expenses has barely budged.
In fact, when Republicans boasted about the “cut[ting] the FBI’s construction bill of $621.9 million” — for a whopping 95% decrease — that precipitous drop uses Huntsville’s one-time cash as a starting point. Furthermore, the FBI only asked for a budget construction cost of $61.9 million, which would have constituted a 90 percent decrease alone.
Meanwhile, the ATF received $1.672 billion for salaries and expenses in 2023, while the appropriations bill would distribute $1.625 billion — a decrease of just 2.8%, not the 7% drop claimed by House Republicans. The alleged 7% cut of $122 million comes from the sum of the $47 million cut in salaries and another $75 million cut from construction costs. The ATF did not request construction funds in its 2024 budget, so bragging about this cut is ridiculous. Just as with the FBI, judging salaries and expenses in a comparative comparison results in a much more modest cut.
Obviously any kind of fiscal discipline should be welcomed. But it’s not as if Republicans are committed to pruning federal law enforcement across the board.
“The Drug Enforcement Administration was an exception in the bill, as it would receive a modest increase in funding,” writes Eric Katz on Government executive. The bill would fund the DEA with $2.57 billion; When accounting for revenue from diversion control programs, Republicans say the department would receive “$42.4 million more” than in 2023.
The bill also directs not only the DEA but also the FBI to prioritize fentanyl surveillance. The FBI is directed to “allocate the maximum amount of resources” to target “trafficking” of fentanyl and other opioids. There is no sign of acknowledgment that prohibition is exactly why fentanyl has proliferated and that harm reduction measures would be much safer and more effective than a law enforcement solution.
In fact, Republicans flat-out state in their press release that the cuts are not intended to save taxpayers money, noting that the bill “right-siz[es] agencies and programs and redirects that funding to combat fentanyl and counter the People’s Republic of China.”
Clearly, when the federal government consistently spends far more than it takes in, there is room to cut and it is imperative to do so. It’s unfortunate, then, that Republican lawmakers are boasting about plans to cut $200 billion over 10 years — 1% of the federal debt accrued over that period — and it’s even more disturbing to know that they’re fudging the numbers to even to get that. much.