Budget

As a senior member of the House Budget Committee  Congressman Garrett is on the frontline of House Republican efforts to rein in runaway government spending and shrink our country’s ballooning national debt. 

A lifelong advocate of limited government and lower taxes, Congressman Garrett knows our country doesn’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem.  The key to addressing our country’s fiscal crisis is not through higher taxes, but through the reduction and elimination of duplicative and unnecessary government programs.

Congressman Garrett has long warned that our country’s addiction to spending and debt would eventually come back to haunt us.  With our national debt now topping $16.6 trillion and our budget deficit cresting above $1 trillion last year, it appears that the time of reckoning has finally arrived. 

Congressman Garrett understands the gravity of the situation and is committed to balancing the U.S. budget and getting our fiscal house in order.  Congressman Garrett believes our country must learn to adhere to a strict budget just like American families do every day.  We are beyond the point of making small tweaks to balance the budget –- only wholesale, comprehensive reform will suffice.   

While making cuts to balance the budget will be difficult, Congressman Garrett understands it’s the only choice we have to secure the economic future of our children and grandchildren.  His record proves he is willing to make the tough choices in order to fix our spending problem.  Congressman Garrett was a lead author of the RSC Spending Reduction Act, which called for $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next ten years. 

Cut, Cap, and Balance: Fiscal Year 2013 Budget

Most recently, as Chairman of the RSC Budget and Spending Task Force, Congressman Garrett was the lead author of Cut, Cap, and Balance: Fiscal Year 2013 Budget, a conservative budget blueprint that balances our country’s federal budget deficit in five years. 

“This budget blueprint proves that it is possible to balance the budget in ten years, despite what skeptics would like you to believe,” said Congressman Garrett when unveiling the RSC  budget.  “These common-sense conservative solutions to address our country’s fiscal crisis will ensure that we meet this challenge head on, rather than put off the tough decisions for another day.  Gimmicks and tricks won’t cure our spending addiction –- we need honest solutions for the challenges ahead.”

Specifically, the RSC proposal addresses the following areas to balance the federal budget deficit in five years:

Reduce Spending

• Repeal ObamaCare to eliminate $636 billion in additional spending over ten years.
• Set discretionary spending at $931 billion beginning in 2013 (the level proposed in last year's House-passed budget resolution minus the sequestration under the Budget Control Act).
• Ensure our nation’s national security by meeting defense needs.  Defense spending would total $554 billion in 2013 and would increase to $699 billion in 2022.
• Reduce non-defense discretionary spending from $377 billion in 2013 to $329 billion in 2022.
• Reduce unnecessary mandatory spending—other than Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—by $1.3 trillion between 2013 and 2022.

Save Medicare

• Strengthen Medicare’s long-term finances.  This budget would slowly phase-in an increase in the Medicare eligibility age for those born in 1958 and after.
• Provide improved healthcare choices for individuals at or near retirement.  The RSC believes that current Medicare beneficiaries should have the option to voluntarily opt-in to a menu of private health insurance plans.  This optional “premium-support” system would be structured much like the health insurance that Members of Congress receive.  Over time, Medicare would transition to a solvent premium-support system. 

Reform Medicaid

• Block-grant Medicaid and remove Washington D.C.’s burdensome red tape.  This budget would empower the states with the appropriate flexibility to determine Medicaid eligibility and benefits, thereby improving the quality of care and access to vital services for the neediest and most vulnerable Americans.

Safeguard Social Security

• Strengthen Social Security’s long-term finances.  This budget would slowly phase-in an increase in the Social Security full retirement age for individuals born in 1958 and after.

Enact Pro-Growth Tax Reform

• Prevent any new tax increases on the American people and repeal the unaffordable $813 billion tax increase included in ObamaCare.  This budget proposes a smarter tax code that would lower rates while broadening the tax base.