WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration will propose a $15 billion rescission package on Tuesday that includes $7 billion in Children's Health Insurance Program funding and $800 million from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), administration officials said.
Senior administration officials, speaking on a background call with reporters Monday evening, repeatedly stressed that none of the budgeted money to be rescinded would affect current programs. "These are [monies] that sit in the accounts that haven't been spent," one senior official said. "Sometimes there are good reasons why it hasn't been spent because the law [for spending it] is lapsed, or there's no programmatic basis ... but we think it's important for taxpayers to get [this money] off the books."
The $7 billion in proposed rescission money from the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is in two separate "pots," the official said: one pot of $5 billion from funds allotted to CHIP in 2017 for which the authority to spend the money has lapsed; and another pot of $2 billion in contingency money for which no states are likely to be eligible to receive. "Again, this money is not going to be spent," the official said.
The $800 million in money from CMS had been allocated to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation, the agency division that is developing pilot programs such as accountable care organizations and value-based reimbursement. "The issue with this program is, they got $10 billion under Obamacare for last 10 years; they can't spend this $800 million and they're about to get another $10 billion -- under the mandatory law that Obamacare is -- in 2020," the official said. "So nothing we've found that suggests that we can't rescind this money without having any programmatic effect."
Another $252 million of the rescission money will come from excess funds to battle the 2015 Ebola outbreak -- an outbreak that the World Health Organization declared to be over in 2016. "We want to send that money back" to the treasury, he said.
Even if the proposed rescission package doesn't impact current programs, "there are some [funds in it] that could be spent [later on]," the official told 51˶. He noted that these unspent funds were often used by Congress as "pay-fors" to offset money being spent on other programs, so sending the money back to the treasury will prevent it from being used as offsets in future budgets, and thus will help curb spending.
The rescission package must be acted on within 45 days of being transmitted to Congress; approval requires simple majorities in both the House and Senate. "The thing that makes this such an appealing tool is that there is no filibuster [allowed] in the Senate," the official said. Congress can subtract monies and specific items from the rescission package but cannot add any funds to be rescinded.