Sustainable Budget Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASE. Mr. Speaker, can anyone with any halfway working knowledge of government finances seriously dispute that our federal fiscal house is dangerously out of order?

Our national debt is approaching $32 trillion, doubling in just the last decade alone, and up some $3 trillion in just the two years since I last introduced my Sustainable Budget Act in February 2021. More directly, our debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP), or the measure of our economy's ability to sustain national debt, now stands at 120 percent, doubling since 2000. The fastest-growing part of our federal budget continues to be interest payments on our debt, increasingly outpacing and crowding out critical defense and non-defense spending alike.

In a Congress where we often repeat the platitude that our budget reflects our values, it is disturbing that the main common value reflected is fiscal unsustainability ranging to irresponsibility. We need look no further than a mirror for the root cause: our collective inability to face the music of fiscal responsibility and sustainability.

We clearly need help with our collective inability to confront this reality. My Sustainable Budget Act, again co-introduced yesterday with Congressman Steve Womack, is at least a start toward a solution. It would follow the models of Simpson-Bowles and other such independent, bipartisan commissions charged with focusing on our deficits and debt and recommending a sustainable path for an up-or-down vote by Congress.

Our bill is similar to other proposals, including the TRUST Act that I have reintroduced with Congressmen Scott Peters and Mike Gallagher to save our foundational entitlement programs from similar unsustainability. Together, they offer a far better way to tackle our debt crisis than denial, anger, avoidance, diversion and rhetoric. I urge their prompt consideration and passage.

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