Flores Supports Bipartisan Budget Agreement

Statement

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Bipartisan Budget Act, a two-year bipartisan budget agreement between the House and Senate. Following passage of the budget agreement, Congressman Bill Flores (R-Texas) issued the following statement:

"Today's bipartisan passage of a 2014-2015 budget agreement is a step in the right direction for Congress to provide the stability needed to reduce the economic uncertainty blowing out of Washington. This step is needed in order to grow more American jobs and better pay checks. The budget agreement reduces the deficit by $23 billion, cuts spending and preserves a large majority of existing sequester cuts. It accomplishes all of these without raising taxes. It includes reforms to mandatory spending programs to reduce the deficit. It also reforms the federal government pension system so that federal employees begin paying a higher share of pension costs in an effort to more closely mirror private sector pensions.

"Additionally, I was pleased to see that this agreement included a temporary fix to the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula for physician payments. I would have preferred to see a long-term SGR fix, but I will continue to push for a more permanent solution so that doctors will be able to continue to provide high quality care and increased access for patients.

"This agreement was not perfect, but under a divided government we must work to reduce uncertainty in order to lead our country on a path towards economic growth. While this bill is a small step in the right direction, we still have much more work to do to address our fiscal challenges. Under the sequester in 2014, the defense budget was facing deep, arbitrary cuts and this agreement finds smarter ways to cut spending while fully offsetting the sequester relief with smarter cuts in the true driver of our debt, mandatory spending. The agreement also provides stability and certainty in federal research funding for the important medical and basic scientific research that is being done at universities in our district and across Texas.

"This budget agreement provides a platform for the House to continue its work on spending reforms and deficit reduction and to address our nation's critical needs -- growing jobs, encouraging economic growth, balancing the budget, making the federal government more efficient and more accountable, and developing solutions for American energy security. These are activities that hard working American families want to see from their Congress."

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