Issue Position: Budget
Issue Position
Issue Position: Budget
Budget
The federal government has gone from three consecutive years of budget surpluses at the end of the Clinton Administration, during which $400 billion of national debt was retired, to year after year of record budget deficits. When former President George W. Bush took office, the debt was $5.7 trillion; however, when he left office, it was $10.6 trillion. In those eight years, the debt nearly doubled and deficits ran rampant. Two wars, the Medicare prescription drug bill, and tax cuts primarily directed toward the wealthy were among the initiatives undertaken by President Bush, but he paid for none of them.
Our accumulated national debt has now grown to more than $12 trillion. This is a debt service that each of us, and our children and grandchildren, will be required to pay back for decades to come. Restraint is needed on both the spending and the tax cut sides of federal fiscal policy. Unfortunately, the economic crisis has necessitated several enormous infusions of debt-financed taxpayer funds to keep our economy from collapsing.
Now that the economy appears to be stabilizing, I am committed to working with my colleagues to restore our country to a responsible long-term budget. Congress came together in the past to turn around a ballooning deficit, and we can do so again. I recently supported a bipartisan commission to recommend ways to address the nation's deficits and cut spending, and I am pleased to see President Obama issued an Executive Order to create such a commission. I also supported the reinstatement of the so-called "Pay-Go" rules, so that we can stop this cycle of debt expansion and return our country to a sound fiscal future. Under Pay-Go, which is short for pay-as-you-go, any spending increase over an agreed upon baseline must be offset by either a corresponding spending cut or revenue increase, with the end result being budget neutral.
While all these steps will help put us on the right track, we will face tough choices in the future if we are going to fix this problem.
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