Fiscal Responsibility
Congressman Garcia is committed to working with his colleagues on a bipartisan basis to find a thoughtful, measured, and balanced approach to deficit reduction that creates jobs in the short-term and brings down deficits over the long term. Toward that end, Congressman Garcia helped launch a bipartisan group of freshman members of Congress calling for sensible action and compromise. Earlier this year, bipartisan members of this group came together to support legislation to cut $200 billion in duplicative federal spending over the next 10 years.
Congressman Garcia is a strong supporter of the pay-as-you-go principle—or “PAYGO”— a tried and tested tool for fighting deficits that that helped create budget surpluses during the Clinton Administration. Under the PAYGO law, Congress—like families across Florida—must pay for all new policies that call for new entitlement spending or reduce revenue so that they add nothing to the deficit.
More on Fiscal Responsibility
Local leaders successfully lobbied Congress for a one-year extension to a federal program that brings $1.2 million a year to Monroe County to offset the property tax burden.
The program, called Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes (PILT) program, had expired at the end of 2013, but county officials and House Rep. Joe Garcia, (D-South Florida), were able to get the funding reauthorized for at least one year, as part of a national farm bill passed earlier this week.