Budget

The federal budget is a reflection of our fundamental values as a nation. Determining the priorities in which our government invests, and who pays for that investment, is perhaps the greatest moral decision Congress faces each year.

I believe we should be making strategic long-term investments in education, scientific research, health care, transportation, housing, environmental protection, and other building blocks of our nation’s future. We should be simplifying the tax code to ensure that everybody contributes their fair share, while extending tax relief to small businesses and the middle class to promote economic growth. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, as well as the retirement security of the “baby boom” generation, we should also act to reduce our staggering national debt.

Our responsibility to craft an annual budget resolution was immeasurably harder this year because of the nation’s dire economic and fiscal situation.  When President Obama took office in January, he faced a deficit of well over $1 trillion, a national debt of $10.6 trillion, and the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression.  As co-chair of the Democratic Budget Group, I am proud of my record of pushing for greater fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets, and pay-as-you-go (PAYGO).  As we restore order to our fiscal house, however, it is also imperative that we make the necessary investments now to get our economy moving again and position it for a stronger future.  I strongly believe the Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 budget resolution – which complements the countercyclical efforts put in motion by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – strikes the right balance. 

The FY 2010 budget resolution charts a new course in our nation’s economic and fiscal policy through initiatives that will grow the economy by creating jobs, providing tax relief to middle-income families, and making critical investments in education, health care reform, renewable energy programs and energy independence.  And it honors our veterans by providing a substantial funding increase for veterans’ health care and programs.

The budget plan also attempts to restore honesty, accountability, and sustainability to our fiscal planning.  It includes likely foreseeable costs, like funding for natural disaster costs, reductions in Medicare fees to doctors and funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been omitted from past budgets in order to mask the true size of the deficit.  It also adheres to the statutory pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) budget rule which was essential to bringing the budget into balance in the 1990s.  In addition, it includes a blueprint to cut the deficit by nearly two thirds over the next four years and to ensure that essential new investments in health care, education and energy independence do not add to the deficit.

The FY 2010 budget resolution includes the basic foundations of President Obama’s vision, and it represents a return to government that is both fiscally responsible and responsive to the needs of the American people.  

For more information on the federal budget, including charts, graphics, and more, please visit the website of the House Budget Committee.

Related Information

Introduction to the Federal Budget Process

Chart: The Cost of Tax Cuts vs. The Cost of Social Security