WASHINGTON — A push from your senator in Washington to reign in government spending.
Sen. Mike Braun, along with help from his fellow Hoosier Sen. Todd Young, are introducing a bill they say will “cap, cut, and balance” the federal budget. It’s called the MAP Act. The same bill is being brought up for debate in the House by Texas Republican Rep. Kevin Brady.
“The time has more than come to curb federal spending,” Brady said on the steps of the House chamber Thursday. “The truth is Washington does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem.”
Sen. Braun, likened the issue to the government overusing a credit card that can’t be maxed out. He said Washington needs to readopt an old mantra that he said the government used to live by when it came to federal spending in the pre-WWII era.
“That you borrow money not to consume, that’s called putting on a credit card,” Braun said on the Senate floor. “Almost everything we do in the federal government, there is not a tangible asset to show for it. We are either spending it or consuming it.”
Braun said we are consuming much of the money we are borrowing from other countries on entitlements, which are something the federal government didn’t have back when more sources of revenue came about, such as the income tax, which was first implemented in 1913.
“That became a source of revenue for the federal government that we pretty well disciplined ourselves with,” said Braun. “Until we got to when entitlements and mandated spending took over the dynamic of the federal government.”
The MAP Act will help solve these issues, said both Rep. Brady and Sen. Braun. It would place a cap on any spending the government does that does not involve interest attached to it. That cap would fluctuate based on the the country’s full employment GDP.
Brady said basing government spending on that is a more accurate way of predicting how much the government will need to spend in the future.
(PHOTO: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
