Introducing The Honest Budget Act

Statement

This week, the U.S. had the dubious honor of passing $15,000,000,000,000 in debt -- yes, 12 zeroes. This is the equivalent of charging 95 percent of your salary on your credit cards, and no West Michigan family or small business would survive long with that much spending.

Neither will the federal government. That's why I introduced the Honest Budget Act, H.R. 3414; I believe you have the right to know where your tax dollars go. Somewhere, Washington forgot budgets need to be open, honest and transparent, not made to hide our finances behind gimmicks and accounting tricks.

The Honest Budget Act confronts nine of Washington's worst fiscal practices with real, common sense solutions that hold the federal government accountable and makes them more transparent. More spending discipline will be a step in restoring our nation's strong, healthy economy, and let businesses get back to doing what they do best: invest, expand, and, most importantly -- hire.

The Honest Budget Act gets rid of budget tricks, or "gimmicks," used by past Congresses and Administrations that have already enabled over $357 billion in wasteful spending since 2005.

Each of these nine fixes will halt those practices:

* The Honest Budget Act makes it harder for Congress to pass spending bills unless a budget for the year is already in place - meaning the Senate won't be able to go another 900 days without a budget;
* It tightens the process for calling bills "emergency" spending, eliminating the often-abused method for avoiding the fiscal restraints of the budget plan;
* Measures the cost of loan and loan guarantee programs that reflects the loans' fair value;
* Adopts a rule preventing counting repeals of future spending as savings unless they produce actual savings in the current budget;
* Prevent cuts in required spending bills from being counted as savings in voluntary spending bills
* Prohibit shifting timelines to produce phony budget savings in multiple budget years;
* Actually freeze federal pay by eliminating automatic pay increases through the end of 2012;
* Require transfers from the General Fund to bail out the Highway Trust Fund to be scored as new spending. Since 2008, $35 billion has not counted as "new spending."
* Prevent abuse of advance spending by limiting Congress' ability to defer increased spending to future years in order to make room for more immediate needs in the current year (and then argue later that the spending limits in subsequent years should be raised to accommodate the deferred spending)

It is all of our responsibility to call on the federal government to restore some accountability into the budgeting process, as well as spending discipline, so we can restore economic security and return freedom to businesses to create jobs.

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