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Pelosi Asks Chairmen to Trim Fat

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is reminding her chairmen that President Barack Obama isn’t the only one trying to walk the walk of deficit reduction.

She sent her gavel-wielders a letter Monday asking them to come up with a “specific list of initiatives aimed at reducing costs, ending duplication, and promoting efficiency in order to cut the costs of government as aggressively as possible.—

Pelosi’s request comes a week after Obama ordered his Cabinet secretaries to identify $100 million in budget cuts over the next 90 days — an amount that Republicans immediately derided as a pittance.

The Speaker did not put a price tag on the savings that she hopes her chairmen will identify, simply asking them to respond with their recommended cuts by June 2.

The move is part of a bigger fiscal austerity push that Pelosi launched Feb. 19, when she asked the chairmen to schedule hearings to “conduct rigorous oversight of all aspects of federal spending.—

In her Monday letter, Pelosi noted that committees have already conducted more than 162 oversight hearings, with “over one hundred more— planned for coming months.

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