Budget
Our country’s budget should reflect our shared value of opportunity for all. The path to a budget that works for all Americans requires a bold and balanced approach that includes spending cuts, new revenues and entitlement reforms. I am working to implement a forward-thinking plan that invests in our economic growth to create jobs and opportunity in Northwest Washington.
I believe we can cut the deficit by reducing our spending on agriculture and oil subsidies and accelerating the drawdown in Afghanistan. Increased revenue can come through closing tax loopholes for massively profitable companies and restoring tax rates on the highest earners. We should build the middle class by easing their tax burden and making sure the wealthy pay their fair share. Controlling entitlement costs should come from cutting fraud and abuse, not health coverage for seniors. For every $1 spent on recovering taxpayer dollars from Medicare fraud between 2010 and 2013, taxpayers got back $8.10.
Congress returned to a rational budgeting process for 2014 by passing a spending bill that included several job-creating investments. I hope this process serves as a model for bipartisan cooperation to break the cycle of manufactured crises and shutdown politics moving forward.
Accomplishments
- Voted for a 2014 spending bill that invests in long-term economic growth for the Pacific Northwest by funding roads, bridges and highways, helping small businesses export products, and protecting our environmental resources.
- Opposed a Republican budget that would have ended Medicare as we know it, cut Pell Grants for young people who could not otherwise afford higher education, and bankrupt our transportation system.
- Voted to end the tax cuts that go exclusively to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, while extending tax cuts for all American on the first $250,000 of their income.
- Urged the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to cut $4 trillion in a bipartisan letter.
- Support ending taxpayer-funded subsidies for healthy industries including oil, ethanol and cotton.
- Support deficit reduction that limits government spending growth, protects our social safety net, and expands revenue collection, particularly from the richest 2 percent of Americans and large corporations.