News
Lummis, Colleagues Reintroduce Solution to Address America’s Budget Crisis
Published
2 years agoon
By
Ron Richter
U.S. Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Mike Braun (R-IN), Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Mike Rounds (R-SD) reintroduced the Sustainable Budget Act, tasking a bipartisan commission to create a plan to address our unsustainable national debt and present ways to balance our budget. Senator Lummis said we are on an unsustainable path, plain and simple, as Congress has spent trillions of dollars in the last two years with no plan to pay it back, and in the wake of the President’s latest budget request, fiscal responsibility seems low on his list of priorities. The Senator added that people in Wyoming live within their means, and it is time Congress followed suit. Our debt-to-GDP ratio is 97 percent and it is inexcusable and it needs to be fixed.
The Sustainable Budget Act creates an 18-member commission chosen by the President and House and Senate leadership tasked with creating a bipartisan plan to reduce the deficit and balance the budget within 10 years.
Kurt Collins
March 14, 2023 at 9:42 am
Thank you for your efforts, but we need drastic measures for the debt problem; first pass legislation to freeze the budget where it is in 2023; second place a 1% tax on all goods and services in the US with ALL the proceeded going to pay down the debt; third pass a balanced budget resolution by 2030, and the last drastic change is to reduce federal spending by 1% in the next two years….Our generation created this enormous debt and we need not just tighten our belt but put on the corsets to squeeze and reverse our spending habits…Everyone is responsible from the low income with all the entitlement payments to the rich with unfair tax breaks and of course the middle class as always will be the backbone. I understand the 1% is just a suggested number on my part and needs to be studied to determine what is reasonable, BUT something needs to be done NOW.
Ray Olson
March 14, 2023 at 1:25 pm
O.K., but let’s make sure that that committee does its due diligence. During the 12 years of Reagan/Busch the National Debt was increased by more than 240% thanks to the laughable Laffer Curve (tax cuts never have raised revenue, nor will they). During his 1st term Clinton raised the debt by about 40% cleaning up the economic mess left by Reagonomics but after a second term which saw the first surplus in living memory left office only having raised the deficit by 31%. Then came W, with his battle cry of “deficits don’t matter” rode off to fight a war of choice and put it on credit cards while cutting corporate taxes more than doubled the national debt (106%). Then we have Obama- once again a Dem inherited an economy in shambles and managed to save the auto and banking industries fought unemployment with infrastructure programs and health care. He raised the debt by 69% largely because congress refused his repeated attempts at reasonable tax increases. And now we come to Trump who blw an $8 trillion whole in the budget by cutting corporate and wealth taxes raised the deficit by 40% and the only tangible asset we gained from it was the vaccine program which he and his followers have now disavowed (well there was also rolling back Dowd Frank, but that’s a subject for a different post.) Now there is a Dem back in the white house suddenly deficits matter again. Clearly it’s time for an honest analysis that will how that the problem is irresponsible unfunded tax cuts- not spending on infrastructure and social programs that grow the economy.
Dennis Fox
March 14, 2023 at 3:32 pm
Good start, but we need Congress to stop spending money we don’t have. We’re not just “broke” we first have to pay back 32 trillion dollars; just to get back to BROKE. Inflation (devaluation of the dollar) is caused by an over-spending Congress and an over-printing and borrowing Federal Reserve. First, we need to understand the cause of inflation, then radically Limit Congress’s deficit spending. Stop overspending, Audit the Fed, then End it.
Dennis Fox
March 15, 2023 at 11:43 am
Total tax revenues into the federal gov’t actually INCREASED after the 2017 tax cuts. The Laffer Curve has been repeatedly proven correct. Lower the marginal tax Rates and Revenues Always Increase. Been True since The Reagan tax cuts of the 1980’s, when economist Art Laffer first postulated his curve.
Ray Olson
March 15, 2023 at 7:06 pm
Actually, the rise in revenue was because of inflation in 2020 (which was already a problem before Biden, and would have been worse but for covid) and the amount of increase was less than the rise of costs. You probably shouldn’t base your economic knowledge on a theory that can be written on a napkin.
Dennis Fox
March 16, 2023 at 7:39 pm
Simple truths are sometimes the best. Inflation was less than 1.8% in 2020. It zoomed to 9% under biden and a vastly overspending dem. congress. Inflation is caused by Gov’t, deficit over-spending and over-printing of $. We had the best economy in 50 yrs… until the coup of 2020.
Simple facts, simple truths.