Blog: Congress Should Pay for Budget as it Goes

The U.S. House of Representatives last week approved legislation to establish mandatory "pay-as-you-go" (also known as PAYGO) budget discipline to rein in deficit spending and reduce the national debt.

I cosponsored H.R. 2920, the Statutory Pay as You Go Act of 2009, which requires Congress to offset the costs of increases in mandatory spending with savings elsewhere in the budget to avoid increasing the deficit. If the actions of any session of Congress increase the deficit, there would be an across-the-board reduction in certain mandatory programs to neutralize the excess spending and bring the deficit back down.

Establishing a pay-as-you-go law is critical to restoring fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets to Washington. We need targeted, responsible investments to get our economy back on track, but Congress must be required to determine how it will pay for new proposals. Pay-as-you-go legislation will ensure Congress searches out and cuts waste throughout the budget and makes the tough choices necessary to get unacceptably high budget deficits under control.

PAYGO has been proven to work to cut deficits and reduce overall spending. After PAYGO was codified in the 1990s, total federal spending as a percentage of gross domestic product decreased each year from 1991 through 2000. After Congress let PAYGO expire in 2002, projected record surpluses of $5.6 trillion were transformed into projected record deficits of $4.5 trillion.

Upon taking control of the House in 2007, Democrats reinstated PAYGO as a rule of the House, but it did not carry the weight of statute and could be waved without consequence.

Enacting a new PAYGO bill is crucial to restoring fiscal sanity. That said, the House bill could have been even stronger. I voted for a Republican-sponsored proposal to place more limits on year-to-year discretionary spending, but unfortunately that amendment was not approved.

Still, this legislation is a very important step to ensuring we do not shoulder our children and grandchildren with a massive debt burden. H.R. 2920 now heads to the Senate, where I hope it will be passed as soon as possible.

Michigan families make tough budget choices to live within their means, and the government should be forced to do the same thing. It is just common sense.

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