Issue Position: Spending and Balance the Budget II

Issue Position

Mark Neumann knows that America's $15 trillion debt crisis harms not only our economy, but threatens the security of our nation and the freedom of our people. America's greatness is threatened as never before by politicians more concerned about the next election than future generations.

Our debt is now approaching 100% of our nation's GDP. Taxes are sucking 28% out of our economy. Almost everyone agrees that current levels of spending and taxes are unsustainable and incompatible with a healthy economy, yet too many politicians lack the will to do what's needed ... reform ... restructure ... renew.

Mark supports the Republican plan, "Cut, Cap, and Balance," but knows we have to go even further if we're to restore our economy.

He supports a Balanced Budget Amendment that ties government spending to a percentage of GDP. He believes we should cut spending across the board including eliminating subsidies like ethanol.

As a member of Congress (1995-1999), Mark earned the title of "Most Conservative Congressman" Wisconsin has had in the last thirty years, according to Political Scientists Poole and Rosenthal. Mark helped design the 1998 balanced budget. It was the first balanced budget in generations. Speaker Newt Gingrich called Neumann "an absolute prophet of balancing the budget, brilliant and idealistic."

It wasn't easy. When Mark first came to Congress, the tax and spend political establishment of both parties threatened to end Mark's career if he didn't vote the way they told him. And, within a few months, Republican Party leaders kicked him off the Appropriations Committee (the spending committee) because he refused to vote for bigger deficits.

But Mark knew something the establishment politicians didn't. He didn't want a career in politics. He came to Washington to balance the budget, cut spending, and reduce taxes -- he came to get our economy moving, create private sector jobs and restore a chance for the American Dream that was slipping away for so many.

Mark's plan was always to finish the job voters elected him to do, and return to Wisconsin -- to his business, his family, his church and community.

So when Mark was kicked off the Appropriations Committee, he wrote to every other Member of Congress saying, "If I am kicked off this committee for voting my conscience then I'm only sorry I don't have more committees to get kicked off of."

Conservative Republicans rallied behind Mark, they forced the leadership to reverse course and restore his committee assignment. Even more, he was added to the Congressional Budget Committee and became the first freshman member in the history of Congress to ever serve on both the Appropriations and Budget Committees at the same time.

Mark wrote a plan to balance the federal budget. Later, his plan would become part of the framework for the 1998 budget that was balanced for the first time in decades.

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