Issue Position: National Debt

Issue Position

The National Debt

It is $15,735,363,673,245.83 as of 06/08/12

To stop the debt from growing. Pass a Balanced Budget Amendment(BBA) to the US Constitution. The BBA would force Congress to spend annually no more than it takes in as revenue.

To get to a balanced budget:

- Constrain future growth in Mandatory Spending (i.e., Spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) by adopting structural changes in entitlement programs recommended by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (NCFRR) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

- Make cuts in Discretionary Spending (Spending across Government Departments). Turkavage For US Senator lists 46 such spending cuts which I would endorse or propose.

- Propose legislation creating an Auditor General (AG) for each Federal Department. AG would conduct recurring program reviews to identify programs/expenditures that could be cut/eliminated.

To pay down the national debt:
Premised on belief that all Bush-era tax cuts remain in place, propose legislation creating an annual Debt Elimination Assessment (DEA) on taxpayers, proceeds of which would only be used to pay down the debt.

Here's how it would work:

- Taxpayers with Annual Gross Income (GI) of $50,000 to $250,000 would pay annual assessment of .75% of GI; taxpayers with annual GI over $250,000 would pay annual assessment of 1.50 % of GI.

- DEA would be remitted to Treasury where it would be restricted and held in suspense account.

- Congress, under this legislation, would not be allowed to access these funds.

- When fiscal year balanced budget was attained, money would be transferred from suspense account and directly applied against national debt.

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