Tackling Our Nation's Debt

Our nation is in serious financial trouble and it is well past time that we put everything on the table – entitlements, tax policy and all other spending programs – and have a forthright, realistic conversation about our nation’s finances. We have to stop kicking the can down the road. Just look at what is happening in Europe.

The Congressional Budget Office in March said that in just 10 short years the weekly interest payments on our debt will top $11.6 billion – yes, $11.6 billion a week, and that’s assuming our historically low interest rates stay constant. Unless we change course, every penny collected of the federal budget will be consumed by interest on the debt and our nation’s entitlement programs by 2025. That means there will be no money for defense, no money for roads and no money for important medical research to find cures for cancer, juvenile diabetes or autism.

There is no question that the real problem is overspending, especially on runaway entitlement costs and through hundreds of billions of so-called tax expenditures, like tax credits, deductions, exclusions or preferential rates. It also is no secret that our inefficient and burdensome tax code is undermining consumer and business confidence, further weakening our economic recovery.

Comprehensive tax reform is needed now more than ever to rid our tax code of loopholes and earmarks. Unlike an earmark in an annual spending bill, “tax earmarks” are far worse because they continue indefinitely, piling up as special interest lobbies succeed in getting more special treatment for their clients. Consider this sampling of the groups that get tax breaks: ethanol producers; tackle box makers; hedge fund managers; NASCAR, and dog and horse tracks.

I am committed to – and repeatedly have been making – the hard choices that need to be made to get our nation’s financial house in order. I have supported every serious effort to deal with this issue, including the House-passed Ryan Budget, the Senate’s bipartisan “Gang of Six” effort, the House-passed “Cut, Cap and Balance” bill, a balanced budget amendment to the constitution and the Budget Control Act, which cut spending in a deal that prevented a default on our debt and created the failed deficit reduction supercommittee.

I was one of only 38 membersof the House to vote to implement the recommendations of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, more commonly referred to as the Simpson-Bowles Commission.  The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform was based in part on legislation I authored- the SAFE Commission.

I opposed legislation that would have extended the so-called payroll “holiday” for just 10 months by stealing $93 billion from the Social Security Trust Fund, which is already going broke. To make matters worse, the $93 billion borrowed to finance these 10 months of spending came from countries like China, which is spying on us, taking our jobs and has a terrible record on human rights. This extension nearly wiped out the $95 billion in savings that the House cut last year in appropriations bills. I opposed the initial “holiday” in December 2010, too.

As chairman of the House Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) Appropriations subcommittee,
I have reduced the total amount of the CJS bill by over 20 percent over three fiscal years since the start of the 112th Congress in January 2011.

I am ready to reform our nation’s entitlement programs. I am ready to close tax loopholes and put an end to tax earmarks that cost billions of dollars every year. I am ready to simplify the tax code and lower tax rates for all.

I refuse to be constrained by partisan politics and personalities that stymie every viable solution. I do not sign pledges to lobbyists or answer to special interests. Click here to view and read my floor statement on Grover Norquist.  My pledge is to the people of the 10th District of Virginia and my interest is in doing what is best for the country.

I recently received a letter from a mother in South Riding. She said she had just had a conversation with her son, an 8th-grader, about the financial crisis facing our country and told him life will no longer be as we know it if we don’t change course. She closed her letter by writing “Right now American lawmakers can decide the fate of our country. One day, however, it will not be our decision to make. Make the decision now while it is still ours to make.”

She is right. We cannot wait any longer. The future of “this shining city on a hill” is at stake.