Budget talks include many spending cuts

House Republicans promised during the 2010 campaign to roll back spending back to "pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels" -- that's 2008 to you and me -- and they appear to be on their way. For weeks now, Republicans and the White House have been negotiating spending cuts as part of a broad package to address the nation's debt.

Driving the negotiations: A need to increase the legal limit on federal borrowing, often known as the debt ceiling. The U.S. Treasury Department has said it will need increased authority to borrow money as of Aug. 2, 2011. 

Republicans made some headway on the promise earlier this year when they crafted a deal for the 2011 fiscal year budget. (The fiscal year ends September 30.) In that deal, they cut $38 billion from the federal budget. 

We should note that the $38 billion cut is in spending authority, and some of that spending authority is from future budget years.

We should also note that some critics said the House Republicans should have cut $100 billion, not $38 billion, from the last budget to keep their promise. We considered that argument in some detail back in January and rejected it. 

Back then, we said that cutting $100 billion prior to September 30 would actually set the budget on a pace below the 2008 levels. In rating this promise on our Pledge-O-Meter, we will assess their overall success at returning to 2008 spending levels, on a pro-rated basis for the remaining months of this year, and in the 2012 budget and appropriations.

The negotiations for the 2012 budget are ongoing, and the current negotiations around the debt ceiling could include much larger spending cuts for years to come, potentially in the trillions of dollars over the next 10 years. It's not yet clear what a final deal will look like. 

But there has been enough action for us to see the Republicans are trying to cut spending. We move this promise to In the Works.