Joco Today

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D., called on the federal government to reduce spending by reforming Congress’ budget process and enforcing fiscal responsibility at today's Budget Committee Hearing with Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Dr. Philip Swagle. At the hearing, Senator Marshall highlighted concerns about the national debt crisis attributed to recent spending initiatives by congressional Democrats and executive actions taken by the Biden Administration.

Senator Marshall discussed with Dr. Swagle the budgetary impacts of preventing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) fraud, error, and abuse in the upcoming Farm Bill.

During the session, Senator Marshall questioned the accuracy of CBO's scoring of budgetary impacts:

"Dr. Swagle, let me ask you, do you ever review your work in the past? Do you go back and look at the last 10 years and say, what percentage were we off on our scores?" he asked.

Dr. Philip Swagle responded: "We do; we go back for major legislation and analyze what we got right and what we got wrong."

Senator Marshall pressed further: "For the last 10 years, what has your score sheet looked like, speaking in general?"

Dr. Swagle stated: "So we compare ourselves to other major forecasters, and we do pretty well; there are some things that we do well."

However, Senator Marshall was critical: "No, you don’t do well. You just missed the deficit this year by half a trillion dollars – that’s not doing well. Don’t you think you’re off 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% on most of the big numbers?"

Dr. Swagel acknowledged: "Right. So from February to June, the deficit went up by 27%, mainly because of actions taken by the administration... between student loans and other pieces, there’s several hundred billion dollars in additional costs."

On Congress following a meaningful budget process:

"If we did a meaningful bipartisan Senate budget resolution... would that have an impact on how much money we spend? Is that something you could help generate a CBO score for?" asked Senator Marshall.

Dr. Swagle replied: "I mean, we would certainly support Congress in doing that... Regular order would certainly be a change."

Senator Marshall emphasized private sector practices: "...to do a meaningful budget and then use that as the blueprint... As mentioned before, the 2024 budget deficit is going to be $2 trillion..."

Regarding fixing errors in SNAP to reduce deficits:

"I want to talk about SNAP for a second," said Senator Marshall. He expressed concern over high fraud rates within SNAP payments which constitute a significant portion of Farm Bill expenditures.

"Stopping error rates... will save $100 billion over ten years," he asserted.

Dr. Swagle agreed it would ensure benefits reach intended recipients.

Senator Marshall referenced provisions in a bipartisan Farm Bill aimed at preserving SNAP benefits while ensuring modest increases with cost-of-living adjustments.

"My friends across the aisle in the Senate are calling these provisions 'the largest cut to SNAP in history.' In your opinion, do you consider this a cut?" he queried.

Dr. Swagle explained adjustments due to previous administrative changes had increased costs significantly but scaling them back prevents future large increases while still increasing overall spending on SNAP compared to today.