Cut, Cap, and Balance

As you probably have heard by now, the United States has reached its statutory debt limit, and the Treasury Department each day performs “extraordinary measures” to prevent the federal government from having to make any real choices to reduce debt or prioritize spending.

As of right now, only one entity on Capitol Hill has put forward a serious, robust plan to truly reform the way Washington budgets and spends taxpayer dollars, so that we never again hit the debt ceiling. It’s the U.S. House Republican Study Committee (RSC)—and the plan is called “Cut, Cap, and Balance.”

The RSC, led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), articulates its Cut, Cap, and Balance plan in a letter, soon to be sent to House leadership (I’m told they have 90 signatures on the letter so far but are still gathering more). In the letter, they first state unequivocally that they will not vote for a debt-ceiling increase without accompanying cuts and reforms, saying, “…if we do not reverse the out-of-control spending that has led us here, it would be grossly irresponsible for us to extend the limit on the national credit card.”

Exactly right.

Then the RSC makes its demands:

1. Americans deserve immediate spending cuts that demonstrate that we are charting a swift path toward a balanced budget. We must implement discretionary and mandatory spending reductions that would cut the deficit in half next year.
2. To ensure that spending cuts continue, we need statutory, enforceable total-spending caps to reduce federal spending to 18% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with automatic spending reductions if the caps are breached–an approach taken in a bill by Rep. Mack and in another bill by Reps. Kingston, Flake, and Graves.
3. To fundamentally and permanently reform the way that Washington budgets and spends, we must send to the states a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) with strong protections against federal tax increases and including a Spending Limitation Amendment (SLA) like the statutory spending caps described above. Rep. Joe Walsh has introduced a BBA with a spending limit provision (H.J.Res. 56) that has already earned the support of 47 Republican senators.

In short: Cut, Cap, and Balance.

Learn more about this plan at the website http://www.cutcapbalance.com/, and let’s help our friends at the RSC build more support for it.