Udall Pushes for Comprehensive, Fiscally Sensible Path to Avert Sequestration

Press Release

Mark Udall said today that it is critical for Congress to enact a comprehensive, bipartisan deficit-reduction package - in the spirit of the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles plan - in order to head off a series of "painful" cuts to the country's defense budget and other domestic investments that help create American jobs. Udall's comments, from a letter sent today to the Colorado Space Coalition, come as Congress prepares to deal with the upcoming automatic budget cuts, commonly called "sequestration."

"These cuts could have devastating impacts on federal funding important to the aerospace sector, including investments for research and development, math and science education, trade, infrastructure and countless other programs that help create American jobs," Udall wrote in the letter. "We have always known that sequestration would be painful if triggered. Members of both parties in Congress explicitly designed sequestration that way in order to spur a bipartisan congressional agreement on a balanced deficit-reduction plan, something I have been advocating for over a decade. Rather than kicking the budget can further down the road, Congress should act this year to institute a comprehensive deficit-reduction plan that cuts spending, reforms and strengthens entitlement programs and overhauls the tax code."

Udall pledged to continue to push for the Simpson-Bowles plan, which the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform produced in December 2010.

Udall pushed to create the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles Commission in 2009. He has been a leader of a bipartisan effort to turn the Simpson-Bowles plan into legislation and to bring it to the floor of the Senate for a vote, and has advocated for passing the plan on national television.

Udall has been a fiscal hawk since joining Congress, including fighting for pay-as-you-go budgeting, a line-item veto for the president and eliminating earmarks. In 2011, Udall introduced a bipartisan balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution with Alabama Republican Richard Shelby.

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