Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson released the following statement addressing the Administration’s FY18 Budget.

“Now that Congress has received the Administration’s FY18 budget, my colleagues and I will give serious thought and discussion to the proposals that the President has put forward.  I look forward to carefully reviewing the President’s request in the coming weeks so that Congress can get to work on funding bills for fiscal year 2018, which begins in just a few short months. Although we are starting the process later than normal this year, our subcommittee will do what it does every year; scrutinize the request and hold hearings with administration officials to inform our line-by-line funding decisions. This is the responsibility entrusted to the Congress by the Constitution, and we take that obligation very seriously.

“The Administration deserves credit for taking our nation’s fiscal crisis seriously, but I hope that in the coming years we can begin the conversation on addressing the real drivers of our debt, which remain untouched by the yearly appropriations process. Mandatory programs remain on autopilot and continue to grow, dwarfing all other government programs in terms of spending. That is why I will continue to advocate for “going big” with a package of spending cuts paired with tax and entitlement reform, as it is the only way we will truly put our country back on solid fiscal footing.”