Issue Position: Appropriations

Issue Position

In the 112th Congress my colleagues in the House, at the suggestion of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), appointed me to serve on the Appropriations Committee. This is the committee of Congress that sets the annual spending limits for most federal agencies. The spending allocated by this committee is called "discretionary" spending, because Congress has the discretion to spend it how it sees fit. The lion's share of federal spending is called "mandatory" because the amount of tax-dollars flowing out of the Treasury is set by law -- it is auto-pilot spending. A full 68% of all the tax dollars spent in 2012 will be auto-pilot spending on entitlement programs and interest on the debt. It is the Appropriations committee that distributes the remaining 32%, which for 2012 is set at $1.043 trillion dollars. For next year, the House has set a discretionary spending cap of $1.023 trillion dollars. I urge you to take a look at these charts to get a better idea of the fiscal difficulty in which our country finds itself.

Not all federal spending is bad and I know there are federal programs of importance to the State of Wyoming. I will continue to rely heavily on the input and insight of Wyoming citizens to help me understand the impact of spending specific federal programs in our State. But I have been actively engaged in tackling the difficult decisions of spending reductions, because Wyoming sent me to Washington to restore fiscal discipline. Our government is broke. We need to cut up the credit card in order to eliminate the threat America's debt poses to the future of our country. For the well-being of our country, I intend to fight for a new culture in Washington of saving more and spending less. To this end, I have not requested a single earmark since taking office. My Republican colleagues in the House have decided to follow suit by banning earmarks entirely. House Republicans have also cut the operating budget for Members of Congress by more than ten percent, and I support ending automatic pay raises for members of Congress and limiting the pay of Congressman until a budget is passed. These steps do not save a large amount of money in the grand scheme of things, but they are important first steps towards curing Washington's addiction to spending. I will continue to analyze spending according to its costs and benefits for Wyoming's citizens, many of whom have expressed to me their frustration with runaway federal spending that threatens to bankrupt the Treasury for our children and grandchildren.

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