A responsible debt limit offer
Washington Examiner
Since he was sworn in a little over two years ago, President Joe Biden has signed legislation and executive orders that have added $5 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years. Over those same two years, the interest the federal government must pay on its debt has doubled from $345 billion a year to nearly $700 billion. The Congressional Budget Office estimates those interest costs will double again within a decade. At that point, 20% of federal taxes will be spent paying interest costs alone.
The federal government’s spending habits are in desperate need of a new direction, and unfortunately, the exhaustion of the Treasury Department’s legal authority to borrow money is one of the only times lawmakers take deficit reduction seriously.
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Ideally, House Republicans would have gone through the process of producing an actual budget for the federal government for the next 10 years as they are required to do by law. But that road wasn’t taken. Instead, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has released a 320-page bill, the Limit, Save, Grow Act, that would reduce spending by about $4 trillion over the next decade.
The legislation isn’t perfect. But it is a positive step in the right direction, and every House Republican should vote for it. Critically, if House Republicans fail to pass this spending reduction plan, they will have no leverage over Democrats in the debt limit debate, and the stage will be set for the federal government’s disastrous spending trajectory to continue unchanged. Whoever votes with Democrats against these spending cuts is essentially voting for a clean debt limit hike.
Drilling down into the specifics, the legislation is full of commonsense conservative policy. It includes HR 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act, which all but one House Republican voted for just last month. That legislation’s permitting reform is absolutely essential for making it easier and less expensive to build and maintain the next generation of energy infrastructure.
The bill also returns $60 billion in unspent COVID-19 stimulus money back to the Treasury, an essential move to help combat inflation. Biden’s $400 billion giveaway to wealthy college graduates who don’t want to pay their bills is repealed, as is over $270 billion in corporate welfare for electric vehicles and other alternative energy projects.
The work requirements that, before COVID, were applied to all able-bodied adult recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are reinstituted and extended to those as old as 55. More than 4 million of the 40 million currently enrolled in SNAP (more commonly known as “food stamps”) are able-bodied adults without children, yet only 1 million of them are employed. It is important that these people stay attached to the workforce, and requiring them to work or attend 20 hours of job training a week will accomplish that.
The work requirements for Medicaid in the legislation make less sense; if someone is in desperate need of Medicaid, they are probably unable to work at that moment, but no bill is perfect. This is a first offer. It will not be the final deal.
But to get any deal at all on the debt limit, House Republicans must first unite and pass this Limit, Save, Grow Act. Only then will McCarthy have the authority needed to negotiate with Biden.