Edmond Sun - Lankford Supports Balanced Budget Amendment

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By: James Coburn

The time is now for Congress and President Barack Obama to coalesce around a single idea to reduce the national debt, sign a balanced budget and resolve whether to raise the nation's debt ceiling, Congressman James Lankford said Monday.

Lankford is one of more than 218 House members who would favor a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, he said.

Congress tends to just postpone responsibilities, unlike the Oklahoma Legislature, which has a deadline, said Lankford, R-Edmond.

"We've got to be able to build in some real deadlines to make hard decisions," Lankford told The Edmond Sun. "In budget world, the only place to do that is a balanced budget amendment in the Constitution."

So far President Obama has spoken against a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. This while budgets continue to raise the debt every year without an end in sight, Lankford said.

Obama has provided Congress no details on a proposed $4 trillion grand bargain to lower the national debt, Lankford said.

Cut, Cap and Balance is the latest GOP proposal put forth by House Speaker John Boehner "as a solid plan for moving forward," Boehner said.

"We can't get there in one year, so it's setting caps for the next 10 years," Lankford said. "So a little bit at a time, we'll be able to work our budget back in line."

The House is expected to write a balanced budget amendment to be sent to the Senate and ratified by the states. The caps would encompass total government spending, Lankford said.

"The caps we're talking about say each Congress can choose. It doesn't matter where they get this from," Lankford said.

A balanced budget amendment would limit spending to a percentage of the gross domestic product at 19.9 percent, Lankford said. Congress would work within the 19.9 percent limit to fund defense, Social Security, Medicare or any other government budget item.

Lankford said he disagrees with the current conversation in the Senate to let Obama choose to raise the debt ceiling.

"They've been coalescing what people are calling the McConnell plan, which would allow the president to raise the debt ceiling three times over a year and a half," Lankford said. "But he's got to choose how it would be done and send it to Congress and Congress vetoes it."

There is not enough support for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's plan in the House, Lankford said. Instead, the House will begin voting today on the Cut, Cap and Trade plan.

Meanwhile on Aug. 2, the federal government will have less money in the bank than what is needed to make payments with the current debt ceiling, Lankford said.

"On Aug. 3, we will have more money required to go out that day than what we have left in the federal government checking account," Lankford said.

Either a short-term extension on the debt limit or a long-term solution is needed to avoid a U.S. default, he continued. The U.S. will have a $17 trillion debt once the debt ceiling is lifted.

"We don't need to default on our loans. We don't need to default on spending that we have to get done," Lankford said. He said there would be no long-term strategy in allowing the government to default in one day. Most people could not suddenly pay off their mortgage next week with severe cuts, he said.

"We're like that with the federal government right now. We need to get this paid down but we can't do it next week. We've got to get a strategic focus."

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was asked by a House conference in June to describe Obama's $4 trillion plan.

"At that time his statement was it's $2 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years. It's $1 trillion in tax increases, and it's $1 trillion in interest savings -- whatever that means," Lankford said. Nobody knows what the interest rates will be in coming years to validate interest savings, he said.

Lankford said he also would favor the $2 trillion in cuts during the next decade. Obama signed $1 trillion of tax increases into law beginning in 2013 with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Lankford said.

In January, Lankford gave scant credence to the Congressional Budget Office statement that the proposed repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 would add $145 billion to the looming federal budget deficit by the end of the decade.

"What the president is now recommending is doing another $1 trillion on top of the previous trillion in tax increases starting in 2013," Lankford said. These two tax increases equate to $2 trillion.

"I don't think that helps us," Lankford said. "I do agree on the spending cuts, that we've got to be aggressive about that."

Obama's plan to help resolve the debt crisis is raising taxes on single individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and married individuals earning more than $250,000 a year by repealing tax rates put into place in 2001 and 2003, Lankford said.

"The reality of that is -- that would bring in about $380 billion over the next 10 years," Lankford said. "We're talking about currently over $1 trillion in deficit spending every single year."

Lankford said Obama's budget is a spending problem by creating an additional $9 trillion in debt spending in the next 10 years, Lankford said.

"We're spending too much money and we've got to be able to balance that and do it appropriately," he said.

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