Lock Up the Savings From Spending Cuts : Deficit: Here’s a plan to keep House-Senate conferees from restoring pet programs.

With the President prepared to submit next year’s budget to Congress, attention is focused again on deficit reduction. Congress, the President and taxpayers are agreed: Federal spending must be brought under control. Yet despite all of the support for deficit reduction, it is rare that Congress actually cuts spending.

Every year, after the smoke settles and the mirrors are put away, spending cut in hard-fought floor battles reappears in conference committees. Savings evaporate into the ether.

It doesn’t have to be that way. As authors of the Deficit Reduction Trust Fund that was adopted by the House, we’ve got a modest proposal that will lock up spending cuts for good. It’s simple, effective and makes good political sense.

We’ve introduced the idea in our bill, the Deficit-Reduction Lock Box Act.

Before explaining how the concept works, let us describe the problem it’s aimed to correct. Take a look at the spending bills passed in recent years. In many cases, the final dollar level reached in the conference agreements was higher than the levels in either the House or Senate bills.

How does this happen? Simple. Both houses cut dollars out of some programs, sometimes in bloody floor fights. But the conferees consistently pack those amounts--and then some--back into other programs. The net effect is more spending, rather than less. The program is eliminated, but the spending is not.

Here’s where the Lock Box comes in. We propose that every appropriations bill include a separate account for spending cuts. When an amendment passes on the floor to cut spending, the amount of that cut goes into the Lock Box account. Thus, when a spending bill passes either chamber, it will include a solid, specific statement of the amount of spending that was cut.

The conference agreement on the Lock Box account must be somewhere between the House and Senate dollar levels in the Lock Box. For example, if the House puts $50 million in the Lock Box and the Senate puts in $100 million, the net amount of cuts in the conference agreement--the amount in the Conference Lock Box--must be between $50 million and $100 million. This will ensure that deficit reduction remains a priority in the conference.

There’s one more lock on the box. To make sure that the funds will never be spent, discretionary spending caps for the coming fiscal year will be reduced by the dollar amount in the Lock Box.

Every year, groups like the National Taxpayers’ Union and Citizens Against Government Waste publish lists of deficit-reduction votes. But they are all meaningless because the final spending levels never change. If we are going to beat our collective chests about spending cuts, let’s at least cut spending.

Appropriators would be more reluctant to include marginal programs in their legislation if they knew that a cutting amendment would curtail their ability to spend. The Lock Box would thus help get more money to areas like education and crime prevention.

Why is Congress always relying on the President to supply a rescission package? Because we have been unable to cut spending ourselves. Congress, which is responsible for allocating money, must be responsible for trimming when necessary.

The question comes down to whether we really want to cut spending. If we do, then let’s clear away the smoke, put away the mirrors, take out the keys and lock our spending cuts up for good.