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Budget and Spending
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Americans are committed to a principled and accountable approach to spending hard-working Americans’ taxpayer dollars. Unless we act today, within a generation Americans will face either a crushing tax burden or a federal government that is reduced to little more than Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. As a matter of principle, we believe the American people deserve truth in budgeting and have a right to know how federal dollars are spent.
Restore Fiscal Discipline
The federal budget must not grow faster than American families’ ability to pay for it. The amount government spends annually per household has risen to more than $23,000 per household. The current share of the national debt for every American is $29,000. And even more ominously, the present value of unfunded obligations for the federal government is equal to $440,000 per household. It is not plausible to tax our way to spending of this level, instead we must restrain spending. No more new programs, no more spending increases without offsets, and no more egregious earmarks.
Balancing the budget
The federal budget has benefited from double digit revenue growth in 2005 (14.5 percent), 2006 (11.6 percent), and is on pace to do the same in 2007 (11 percent so far). This historic rate of growth in revenue means that the federal budget is within striking distance of being balanced IF spending is kept under control. It also means that no tax increase should be part of efforts to balance the budget, especially since the federal tax burden (measured as a percentage of GDP) is currently—even after the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts—above the historic average.
Budget Process
Since 2001, federal spending has increased by 42 percent. This is partly due to a lack of collective will on the part of our nation’s lawmakers. But it is also due to a budget process that makes it far too easy for the federal budget to encroach upon the family budget. We are committed to changing the federal budget process to reverse these priorities. The current budget process should be converted from a mere suggestion to a simple and legally binding document while also placing ceilings on discretionary and automatic spending. We must also place a premium on reducing spending without cutting needed services, by combating waste, fraud, and abuse through sunset requirements, earmark transparency, and a legislative line item veto.
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