I support fiscal responsibility.  I support making permanent the expanded child tax credit, the new 10 percent tax bracket for low income working families and eliminating the marriage penalty.  I support tax cuts for working families, but I do not support borrowing from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy while we are asking our men and women in uniform to bravely serve their country overseas.

In other words, if you are going to cut taxes, cut spending. This Nation today is spending nearly $1 billion a day simply paying interest on the national debt. It is what I call the debt tax, and this tax will not be eliminated until this government implements fiscally responsible, common-sense practices.  We could build 200 brand-new elementary schools every single day in America just with the interest we are paying on the national debt. Tax cuts may make for good politics for the wealthiest 2 percent of the people in the country, but 60 percent of the people that I represent received less than $2 a week from the 2003 tax cuts.  And those tax cuts resulted in a $374 billion deficit last year, with 70 percent of that money being borrowed from countries like China, Hong Kong and Japan.  It is wrong to fund our government and tax cuts with money borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund, the Bank of China and foreign investors. 

As a member of the fiscally-conservative Blue Dog Coalition, I recently supported the Blue Dog Budget Alternative to the President’s budget that would have enacted responsible spending constraints while at the same time employ strong budget enforcement measures and responsible tax policies.  This Alternative would have cut our deficit in half in two years and balanced our budget by 2012.
 
We must restore fiscal discipline to our nation’s government.  My Blue Dog colleagues and I will continue in our efforts to stop deficit spending and get our fiscal practices in order in a way that prevents future generations from paying for our irresponsible mistakes.