QUESTION TIME: The National Debt

What would you would do, personally to stem the tide of the National Debt?

First, I deal in reality. Federal spending exceeds revenues. As anyone who, like me, has run a business, I understand that we cannot allow this situation to continue. To believe otherwise is fantasy. To address the national debt we need to 1) reduce spending and 2) boost economic growth.

I recognize that unpopular choices on spending will need to be made. We continue to pass budget after budget that add to the debt because politicians too often are afraid of the political blow back from taking away the free ice cream. While Rep. Walter Jones has voted against many of these budgets, unlike true fiscal conservatives, he has also voted against balanced budget alternatives. In fact, he has voted against the conservative-backed RSC balanced budget alternative, which includes deep spending cuts to politically popular programs, every year since 2009.

While the spending cuts required to rein in the debt will be politically painful, I will always vote for reduced spending to balance the budget. I do not believe that you can credibly argue that you are a fiscal conservative, as Rep. Jones does, yet dodge the political heat of the spending cuts required to rein in the national debt.

Reducing spending will require tough choices that impact popular programs. I am willing to make those tough choices, where Rep. Jones has not. Here’s a very specific example.

Means tested entitlement programs, notably the Federal food stamp program, have grown dramatically since Obama entered office. Food stamps, or SNAP has grown from $37 billion to around $80 billion per year, mostly because Obama has expanded the program to millions of people who would not have previously been considered needy, waived requirements that able-bodied recipients without dependent children look for work or get job training, and loosened standards, enabling widespread waste fraud and abuse.

In 2012 Republicans proposed common-sense reforms to the program that would limit food stamps to those who really need it, saving several billion per year. Republicans were derided as wanting to starve children. Rep. Walter Jones was the only House Republican to oppose these reforms. I would have voted in favor of it. The best way to help people is economic growth and job creation rather than government programs.

Democrats argue that increased taxes are the answer to the debt. Rep. Jones, has at times, supported this position. In 2010 he was one of just 3 Republicans to vote for a Democrat proposal that would allow some of the Bush tax cuts to expire, notably those making over $250k per year, a group that includes a lot of small businesses that pay taxes as individuals. More recently, he’s advocated a new “war tax” to pay for Federal spending on overseas military operations.

I disagree. Federal tax collections as a share of the overall US economy is currently about 18% of GDP, in line with the historical averages. Yet, the size of the Federal government has grown to over 21% GDP. That tells us that the problem is not that we’re taxed too little, it’s that we spend too much.

To get the debt under-control we have to save programs like Social Security and Medicare through reforms that ensure their long term sustainability. Increasing the. retirement age for younger workers, focusing benefits on those who truly need it, and creating personal accounts that allow a portion of social security to be invested are all ideas that should be on the table.

Economic growth, which increases tax revenues, is historically the most effective mechanism for balancing the budget. In my view, reducing regulatory burdens, reforming the tax code, limiting frivolous lawsuits, and generally getting government out of the business of business will allow the economy to grow at its full potential.

Rep. Jones doesn’t always agree with this view. A few examples: he voted against a recent conservative proposal to create a panel to identify and eliminate outdated and overly burdensome regulations; he is the only currently-serving House Republican to vote for the Dodd-Frank Act; and, was one of the only republicans to oppose the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act last year, which aimed to curb frivolous lawsuits. I would have voted differently on each of these measures.

Ultimately, there is little disincentive for reckless spending. Political gain in the short term outweighs fiscal pain down the road.

Instead of raising the debt limit, we should reduce spending. The debt limit should be tied to automatic spending cuts and reduced over time. To increase the incentivize for fiscal responsibility, the first thing that should be cut are salaries of congressmen and senior government managers.

If we’re going to break the spend and borrow cycle, we have to remove the incentive to flirt with default and make the consequences of irresponsible fiscal policy hurt today, not at some far off date in the future.