Issue Position: Budget

Issue Position

As Chairman of the House Rules Committee, a former member of the House Budget Committee, and a member of the fiscally-conservative Republican Study Committee, I am very involved in the federal budget process. Throughout my tenure in the United States House of Representatives, I have continually advocated for pro-growth solutions that contribute to American economic expansion. This begins with a budget that limits government intrusion into the free market, eliminates wasteful government spending, reforms entitlements, and fixes our broken tax code.

Some in Congress tend to think raising taxes will solve our nation's fiscal woes. These same people think that additional government spending will lead to economic growth. In reality, tax increases hit job creators and hard-working families and slow our economy further. Instead of wasting more of taxpayer dollars, what the federal government needs to do is stop spending too much.

Washington owes the American people a responsible, balanced budget. House Republicans have put forth a plan to balance the budget in 10 years. The budgets that President Obama and his Democrat colleagues have proposed never balance -- ever. They also raise taxes on all Americans.

In four of the past five years, President Obama has missed his budget deadline. Before this year, Senate Democrats had not even passed a budget for three years in a row. Even in the face of this obvious dysfunction, the House has managed to pass a budget every year since the congressional budget process has been in effect -- except for 2010 when the then-Democrat majority opted to not pass a budget. Clearly, the budget process is broken.

A product of the private sector, I understand the need to fight unnecessary bureaucracy and to utilize market-driven solutions to effectively solve problems in our communities and in government. I know that America can and will again become prosperous beyond imagination and millions of new private-sector jobs will be created if we would just get back to our founding, free-market principles and end big government and wasteful spending.

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