Josh Brecheen: “This amendment would return funding for the U.S. Institute of Peace back to fiscal year '19 funding levels. In doing so…”

“This amendment would return funding for the U.S. Institute of Peace back to fiscal year '19 funding levels. In doing so, this amendment would save $16.3 million. This amendment, again, returns spending for this specific agency back to pre-COVID spending levels. To be clear, this is a modest proposal in the context of the overall spending of the bill. This amendment would reduce spending in the bill by 0.03 percent. That is less than half a percent of the top line for this bill. Side note for all of us who have paid attention to the numbers: Post- COVID, our discretionary budget overall is up 30 percent. That is of note. Why go back to pre-COVID spending levels? If you look at the inflationary index, if you look at what has happened with the housing prices, going back to pre-COVID has a lot of net positives in terms of our Federal outlays. Year after year, the Federal Government continues to outpace spending and outpace revenues. It outpaces the growth of our economy. In a recent report, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the Federal deficit for 2024 is going to reach $1.9 trillion. The COVID-era spending spree drastically accelerated the growth of our national debt. In the next decade, the CBO expects the Federal deficit to grow to $2.9 trillion. That is a $3 trillion annual deficit. We didn't get to $1 trillion in gross national debt until 1980. 200 years of governance and in 1980, we reached $1 trillion.…”