‘Fiscal responsibility’: Conservative lawmakers unveil blueprint to balance budget, execute Trump agenda

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Republican Study Committee released a comprehensive blueprint Wednesday for how the 189-member conservative caucus plans to enact President Donald Trump’s agenda while balancing the federal budget within 10 years.

“It is our fiscal responsibility to not only deliver a balanced budget, but get the federal government out of the way to strengthen the economy so families, small businesses, seniors, and farmers can thrive,” Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, told The Daily Signal.

In keeping with decades of tradition, the RSC offered its budget proposal early in the year to provide a roadmap for Congress. The plan includes proposals for codifying Trump’s birthright citizenship order, defunding sanctuary cities, and eliminating wasteful spending on NPR, PBS, and DEI programs.

Despite years of profligate spending during the Biden administration, the proposal manages to cut enough federal largesse to balance the budget in a decade—a long-stated goal of conservatives.

In keeping with Trump’s promise, it does not raise the Social Security retirement age or cut benefits.

“The RSC budget reins in Washington’s out-of-control spending and eliminates waste, fraud, and abuse across all levels of the federal government,” said Van Duyne, who chairs the RSC’s Budget and Spending Task Force. “We are returning to pre-pandemic levels of spending, advancing pro-growth tax policies, slashing regulatory burdens, and unleashing American energy.”

Budget Blueprint

The RSC is the House GOP’s largest caucus, and each year since 1995 it has released its own budget blueprint. This year, it was Van Duyne’s responsibility to collaborate with dozens of other RSC members to prepare the 115-page proposal (see the full document below).

The budget arrives as Republicans saw their margin of control in the U.S. House shrink from 220 to 218 with the death of Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., and resignation of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. Democrats control 213 seats; there are four vacancies.

Republicans gathered in Washington, D.C., Tuesday to hear from Trump and plot their agenda for 2026. They’ve faced fervent opposition from congressional Democrats, leading to the longest government shutdown in history and setting up another showdown over government spending this month.

Despite those challenges, the RSC helped deliver the votes for the historic reconciliation legislation passed in 2025 that delivered $1.9 trillion in spending reductions and tax relief for American families. The caucus now hopes to build on that success with its latest proposal.

“At its core, the RSC budget is a fundamental rejection of the excessive government spending and regulatory overreach that characterized the Biden Administration’s approach to government,” reads the budget’s introduction.

Immigration and Border Security

The RSC Budget strongly backs Trump’s border security initiatives, which have driven illegal border crossings to new lows. Under the Biden administration, approximately 10,000 unvetted migrants entered the U.S. illegally every day at the southern border. That number dropped to an average of less than 150 per day in 2025.

The proposal funds border wall construction with multiple barrier systems, deploying advanced detection technologies, and substantially expanding the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement through hiring bonuses and retention incentives.

Other immigration-related provision include codifying Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order, defunding sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with ICE, expanding interior enforcement and deportations, providing federal grants to border communities, and establishing a State Border Security Reinforcement Fund to offset costs related to illegal immigration.

The RSC also lists 25 bill and policies its members support, including the Laken Riley Act, which was introduced by RSC member Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., and became law in January 2025. It requires ICE to detain illegal immigrants who commit theft-related crimes.

Wasteful Spending

The proposal takes aim at what conservatives often consider unnecessary government expenditures.

The RSC budget eliminates all federal funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.

It repeals statutory authorizations for every diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) program and office across the federal government, building on Trump’s executive actions to end what the budget calls “radical and wasteful government DEI programs.”

The budget eliminates RAISE Grants (formerly TIGER Grants from the Obama era), the Thriving Communities Initiative stemming from Biden’s Justice40 initiative, and federal funding for high-speed rail projects like California’s troubled high-speed rail system.

The proposal eliminates the Interagency Council on Homelessness and reduces funding for the Community Development Block Grant program and rental assistance programs, restructuring them into state formula grants with work requirements for able-bodied adults.

Entitlement Reforms

The budget includes proposals to curtail the ever-increasing spending on entitlement programs, such as undoing Affordable Care Act (ACA) provisions, which lead to the federal government’s spending more on able-bodied Medicaid recipients than on the original population Medicaid was designed for.

Additionally, the budget proposes cost-saving reforms to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), such as more strictly enforcing work requirements in the program that are often circumvented and ignored by states.

The budget’s section on Medicare proposes eliminating wasteful spending by cracking down on up-coding, a process by which private providers inflate diagnoses and exaggerate patients’ health risks in order to extract more funding from the federal government.

The budget also calls for completely eliminating the estate tax, commonly called the “death tax,” which the RSC argues particularly harms family farms and small businesses.

National Security

The RSC proposes a balancing act when it comes to defense spending—dramatically expanding America’s capabilities while cutting out anything deemed redundant.

“Every dollar allocated to national defense must be utilized strategically to ensure resources directly support our defense capabilities and mission readiness rather than expanding administrative overhead,” reads the budget proposal.

Specifically, the RSC proposes eliminating programs that duplicate work already conducted in other federal agencies.

For example, the RSC suggests moving “the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program” to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), arguing that the department already performs research of this kind.

Drill, Baby, Drill

RSC Chairman August Pfluger and budget chief Van Duyne are both Texans, and that shows in their budget’s emphasis on increased energy access as an economic boost.

“The Biden administration was asleep at the wheel as their policies reduced wages, raised prices, and distorted market signals,” reads the section on “Unleashing American Energy.”

The energy section takes a more celebratory tone, highlighting how the July budget reconciliation bill undid many of the anti-fossil fuel regulations and green energy subsidies established by former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

After applauding Trump’s executive orders to allow for increased drilling, the budget calls for further deregulation to speed up the industry.

“Our allies abroad are waiting for the United States to unleash American energy production,” reads the budget. “The RSC Budget supports policies that decrease the capital costs of producing energy on federal lands, rather than disincentivize energy producers.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]