Federal Budget & Debt Limit

Our nation’s debt limit, currently set at $14.3 trillion, is the legal limit on borrowing by the federal government. Since 1917, when Congress first established the debt limit, it has been raised nearly 100 times, the most recent in February 2010. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has cautioned that unless Congress raises the debt limit, the federal government will default on its financial obligations and will have to stop, limit or delay a number of its payments – including military salaries, Social Security and Medicare payments, interest on debt, unemployment benefits and tax refunds.

As Congress continues to debate the federal budget and raising the debt limit, my top priorities continue to be strengthening the economy and creating American jobs in a fiscally responsible manner. This includes bringing our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and ending our involvement in Libya; we simply cannot afford the billions of dollars we are spending on these wars every month when we have serious and immediate fiscal challenges to solve here at home.

When the House of Representatives considered H.R. 1473, the budget agreement that funded the federal government through the remainder of fiscal year 2011 and averted a government shutdown, I voted for the bill, as it contained nearly $40 billion in spending cuts and was an important compromise that moved us forward.

In April 2011, the House voted on the proposed Republican budget for fiscal year 2012, spearheaded by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). I voted against the Ryan budget, because it fails to achieve the goal of deficit reduction in a responsible or thoughtful manner. Instead, it places the burden on the backs of America’s working families and seniors while protecting tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations that ship American jobs overseas.

The Ryan budget would effectively end Medicare as we know it, replacing it with a voucher system forcing seniors to go out into the private market to buy their own health insurance. According to estimates from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the Ryan budget would cause seniors’ Medicare costs to more than double, if not nearly triple. As we work to reduce the deficit, there must be a real sense of shared sacrifice, and programs for our seniors and the poor must not be singled out.

The American people expect us to cut spending and reduce the deficit, and we can and must find budget savings across all departments of the government, pursuing further reductions carefully without undermining our nation’s economic recovery or putting the safety and security of the American people at risk. I will continue to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle toward this goal.

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