Nashville Democrat Jim Cooper says a Senate bill to straightjacket Congressional spending sounds like a good idea.
Another Tennessean, Republican Bob Corker, introduced the measure in the Senate this week, along with Democrat Claire McCaskill. It doesn’t target particular programs or agencies for cuts. Instead, it sets an annual spending cap of roughly 20 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.
Cooper says that makes a lot of sense.
“We need to make sure government lives within its means. Every family, every business has to live that way. Pressure like that will help government perform better.”
The bill specifies that emergency spending wouldn’t be subject to the cap, but it defines just what constitutes an emergency. Any other effort to push spending beyond the cap would require a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate.
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