Issue Position: Budget & Debt Reduction

Issue Position

Senator Reed has a proven track record of fiscal responsibility. As the United States emerges from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Senator Reed is working hard to put our nation back on a sound fiscal course, while also laying the foundation for future economic growth and development.

Balancing the budget means making hard choices to align spending with revenues, and this effort must include reforming the tax code. Senator Reed took the tough votes in the 1990s to help balance the national budget and create record surpluses. He also opposed the unfunded Bush tax cuts skewed to the wealthiest, the costly war in Iraq, a prescription drug program that failed to negotiate costs with drug makers and left many seniors without coverage, and other special interest giveaways that squandered the hard fought surplus and led to record deficits.

To get our nation's fiscal house in order Senator Reed supports ending wasteful expenditures, capping spending, and shared sacrifice. He understands that it is critical to fight for Pell Grants, Medicare, and other initiatives that are critical to Rhode Island families.

Key Priorities & Accomplishments

Supported historic deficit-reduction packages and other steps that helped balance the budget--led to a projected ten-year surplus of $5.6 trillion in 2001--and enabled the U.S. government to pay down over $450 billion of public debt between 1998 and 2001.
As the U.S. took extraordinary steps to prevent the collapse of the entire financial system and millions of job losses, Reed successfully fought to include a provision in the law giving taxpayers stock options in the firms they saved. Thanks to Reed's law, as the banks repaid their original loans taxpayers earned more than $8.5 billion in additional dividends -- money that would have otherwise been kept by the banks.
Helped pass a bipartisan landmark defense procurement reform law to stop fraud and wasteful spending at the Pentagon and prevent hundreds of billions in cost overruns.
Voted against costly, special interest giveaways to big oil and agri-businesses.

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