U.S. Senate candidate Mark Neumann wants to help the congressional supercommittee in its work. With the bipartisan House and Senate panel charged with finding $1.5 trillion in federal spending cuts, the Republican Senate candidate has compiled his own list of $2 trillion worth of potential cuts. Neumann said the members of the supercommittee could pick and choose from his list of 82 different government programs that could be cut or eliminated. “What we’ve done is suggested more cuts than are necessary to reach the $1.5 trillion that’s are called for,” he said. “I think what we should be doing is debating the priority of spending in our federal government, so if they can say that’s a higher priority than something else, let them make that case.”
AUDIO: Mark Neumann in Madison (6:45)
Neumann held press conferences at the Milwaukee office of Senator Herb Kohl — the Democrat he’d like to succeed, and the Madison office of Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, the only announced Democrat seeking Kohl’s seat. “When Tammy Baldwin took office twelve years ago, the federal budget was balanced, we were in surplus paying down debt, and our economy was booming,” said Neumann. “I’m not blaming her alone. But the bottom line is after twelve years our country’s in trouble, fifteen trillion dollars in debt, we’re going the wrong way in nine percent unemployment. I would like to see a plan to turn this thing around.”
Neumann’s recommendations include:
- Eliminate ethanol subsidies ($60 billion)
- Eliminate next generation high speed rail ($10 billion)
- End TARP ($60 billion)
- 15% cut in non-defense federal workforce ($229 billion)
- Three-year freeze on pay and bonuses for federal employees ($144 billion)
- Eliminate limousines owned by federal government (2008 levels) ($10 million)
- Eliminate Hollywood Liaison offices ($34 million)
- Close Federal Employee Retirement Systems (FERS) to new enrollment. ($75 billion)
- Eliminate Amtrak subsidies ($16 billion)
- End foreign aid to countries with $10 billion U.S. treasuries ($18.3 billion)
Neumann faces former Governor Tommy Thompson, Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, and state Senator Frank Lasee in a Republican primary for the Senate seat.