Eight years ago, when President Barack Obama was sworn into office, our colleagues in the Republican Party called for fiscal discipline. They said our national debt was reaching a dangerous level, and we were mortgaging our children’s futures.
As Blue Dog Democrats, we agreed with the calls for fiscal discipline to get our debt and deficit under control. In 2010, we worked with our Republican colleagues to restore the bipartisan pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) rules, to ensure the government does not spend beyond its means. That same year, Congress passed, and President Obama signed into law, the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010, which established a budget enforcement mechanism that requires direct spending and revenue legislation to be deficit neutral.
Today, with a national debt that has reached an unprecedented amount, the Blue Dogs continue to call for fiscal discipline, including bipartisan, credible, revenue-neutral tax reform. However, we are alarmed to see that our Republican colleagues have taken actions that worsen an already dangerous situation.
This year alone, the national debt surpassed $20 trillion for the first time in U.S. history, and we have seen the largest annual budget deficit in four years. Yet, House Republicans just passed a partisan budget that bypasses the PAYGO rules and will add up to $1.5 trillion to the national debt. That budget will serve as a vehicle to pass a tax bill based on the Freedom Caucus-endorsed “Big Six” tax framework, which the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has estimated could cost up to $2.2 trillion, and the Tax Policy Center has estimated would cost $2.4 trillion over the next decade.
With the Republican Party in charge of the White House and both chambers of Congress, we have seen our dire fiscal state worsen. Now is not the time to turn away from those calls for fiscal discipline.
Get the Exclusive
05.18.2024