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Fiscal Responsibility
For the last eight years, we have seen our national debt double from $5.7 trillion to over $11 trillion. This reflects the costs of tax cuts that were never paid for, a prescription drug benefit for Medicare that was wholly unfunded and a War in Iraq that was financed by debt. Adding to this, the deficit figures for these years were kept artificially low by hiding hundreds of billions of dollars of war funding in emergency spending bills, omitting costs of fixing the alternative minimum tax (AMT) and preventing cuts to reimbursement rates to Medicare providers from the annual budget. The legacy of the last eight years makes it all the more urgent to take action today to put our nation back on the road to fiscal stability.
Since being elected to Congress, Congressman Thompson has been an advocate for reestablishing one of the most basic, responsible and successful principles of budget enforcement – Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO). PAYGO requires both tax cuts and spending increases to be offset with new revenues or spending reductions. These rules have a long history of success- in the 1990s they helped generate record surpluses. However, PAYGO was allowed to expire in 2002. As a result, the record surpluses were wiped out.
Congressman Thompson is an original co-author of the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act (H.R. 2920), which would restore PAYGO rules for both houses of Congress. The House of Representatives passed H.R. 2920 on July 22, 2009 by a vote of 265-166 and it now awaits consideration before the Senate. While PAYGO is not a cure-all for solving our federal deficit, it is a crucial first step toward reducing it.
Equally as large a fiscal challenge for our nation is the projected growth in the cost of healthcare. Our current healthcare system is not sustainable. In the last 15 years, healthcare spending has jumped 145% to over $2.24 trillion. This is the equivalence of one in every $6 we earn going for healthcare. At current rates, within a decade that figure is expected to rise to one in $5, and within 30 years it will be one out of every $3. If we do nothing to slow the long-term growth of these costs, programs like Medicare and Medicaid will consume an ever-increasing share of our federal budget, meaning less funding for education, defense, infrastructure and other national priorities.
Congressman Thompson is a strong supporter of comprehensive healthcare reform legislation, and helped to draft parts of the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act (H.R. 3200), one of several proposals currently being debated by Congress. This bill includes several measures that will help keep healthcare costs under control, such as:
- Improving incentives for family doctors and primary care providers, who are able to provide higher quality care for many ailments at a lower cost;
- Eliminating co-pays on preventive care for Medicare and private plans to help reduce the need for costly treatments of health conditions later on; and,
- Investing in efforts to fight waste, fraud and abuse in programs such as Medicare.
It is important to remember that we are still at the beginning of this process and there is much work that remains to be done in both the House and the Senate before we will reach a final bill. Nevertheless, Congressman Thompson firmly believes that the final version must reduce long-term growth of healthcare costs.
We have a long way to go to put our nation back on the road to fiscal stability, but it is important that we take these steps today. By not paying for the choices we make now, we are taking away choices from our children and grandchildren.
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Related Newsroom Documents
President’s Budget Harms Middle-Class, Neglects Seniors & Kids, 2/6/2007
Statement by Rep. Mike Thompson on the President’s State of the Union Address, 1/24/2007
Article: "Thompson Supports Historic Changes to House Rules", 1/6/2007
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