At a Capitol Hill press conference Tuesday, Rep. Peter Welch and three other House members launched a new working group devoted to tackling growing deficits.

The Spending Cuts and Deficits Reduction Working Group – comprised of Welch, Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Rep. John Adler (D-N.J.) and Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) – plans to seek out subsidies to eliminate, loopholes to close and unnecessary programs to cut. The group on Tuesday unveiled four new bills, called the REDUCE Acts of 2010, which together will cut the deficit by more than $70 billion.

"America faces two great economic challenges. In the short-term, we must revive our economy and create new jobs. In the long-term, we must get the deficit under control," said Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. "Tackling the unsustainable deficit will take hard work, but it is work that is long overdue."

At Tuesday's press conference, each of the four founding members of the working group outlined a piece of legislation tackling budgets in different sectors of the federal budget. Welch's bill, the Reduce and End our Debt Using Commonsense Eliminations (REDUCE) in the Defense Program Act, would terminate three unnecessary weapons systems – the C-17 aircraft, the EP-X aircraft and the CG(X) vessel – and consolidate the armed forces' three chains of military exchanges. It would save an estimated $2.6 billion in 2011 and $4.1 billion over the next ten years.

Together, the four REDUCE bills take on wasteful spending in budgets ranging from the Energy Department to the Treasury Department to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Among many other provisions, the legislation:

• Eliminates tax loopholes for oil companies and duplicative and unnecessary federal research and development dollars.

• Halts unnecessary expansion of the strategic petroleum reserve.

• Implements electronic pay stubs for Treasury employees.

• Cuts millions of dollars in funding for the Bureau of Public Debt and the Financial Management Service.

• Re-values certain federal housing subsidies and eliminates the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which subsidizes companies that invest abroad.

• Eliminates duplicative and unnecessary programs, such as health care grants administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and subsidies for profitable private logging companies.