2. Help Pass a Responsible Budget That Protects the American Dream

As we work to rebuild our economy and invest in the future, we must take a balanced approach to our debt and deficit. This means investing in the middle class, making smart, targeted reductions in spending, closing tax loopholes and reducing subsidies to profitable industries. As a former Chair of the California State Assembly Budget Committee and Los Angeles City Council Budget Committee, I have experience managing the largest budgets in the country and balancing budget priorities on the state and local level.

Many of my Republican colleagues use the example of American families, to explain what we should do with our budget in this country. They too often focus on cuts without discussing the implications of these cuts. I feel this is a flawed example, because it does not take into account that no American family is the lender of last resort for other nations.

No family prints currency that is the international standard for reserve currency. No one has a family of 310 million people. Instead, using families as an example simplifies an incredibly complex budgeting process. However, since it is such an easily understood example, I will use it here, to talk about what I feel is important when we work on a budget for the next several years.

In most American families, if paychecks are cut, or an unforeseen emergency happens, families don’t just pay 10 percent less mortgage or take 10 percent less of the medicines they may depend on.

We make smart cuts, we stop buying the things we don’t need, but we don’t stop putting money away for the kid’s college fund or our retirement. At least in my house, my wife and I don’t decide what is important to each of us and go spend money on only those things, ignoring the other person. That doesn’t work in families, and it won’t work in Washington.

We plan for our future. If we have to use credit cards until things stabilize, so be it. That makes us like most of the families out there. We don’t stop investing in our family and our future.

As your representative, I will fight to get Congress around the table to negotiate. We must create an American budget that invests in job growth, educates our future workforce and which cuts where it makes sense to cut: rooting out the waste, fraud and abuse and cutting tax loopholes to make sure everyone pays their fair share.

During the "markup" of the Fiscal Year 2014 Budget on March 13, 2013, I offered two amendments. One would have prevented any reduction in the mortgage interest deduction that working families can take on their income tax returns. The other would have closed tax loopholes that allow owners of private jets to get a tax break not available to airlines throughout the United States that actually create jobs. Both amendments failed along party lines.

Democrats offered an alternative to the damaging Republican budget. That alternative was struck down along party lines.

Learn more about some of the details and reasoning behind the Democratic budget alternative and read about the differences between the Democratic and Republican budgets.

President Obama also has offered a budget for Fiscal Year 2014. You can read more about the details of the President's budget here.