Dear Friend,
As Congress finishes its work prior to the August District work period, I wanted to keep you informed of the action I took last evening. The House of Representatives voted on legislation intended to reduce our deficit and raise the debt ceiling - I chose to vote against this legislation.
For decades now, we have spent too much money on ourselves and have intentionally allowed our kids and grandkids to pay for it. It is intergenerational theft—literally stealing from our best asset, our posterity. The correct course of action, as I have said from the beginning, is to enact permanent and structural reform that puts us on a real path to balanced budgets. That way we can stop raising the debt ceiling and start paying down our debt. Without balanced budgets, our economy will continue to struggle to create jobs.
I did not feel that this legislation met the test of implementing permanent and structural reforms. Our debt crisis is driven by mandatory spending on entitlement programs and this plan fails to address such spending. Also, this plan does not begin to reduce our $14 trillion in current debt and still adds nearly $7 trillion in new debt over the next decade.
However, this legislation could eventually lead to the best permanent solution, a balanced budget amendment. This is certainly worth fighting for and I will lead on that front. But a vote alone is not worth the price tag to be paid by future generations. For that price, we should have required passage of a balanced budget amendment for state ratification.
I will continue to fight for a balanced budget amendment, lead our nation to live within its means and tackle out-of-control entitlement spending. It will be a long fight, but the enactment of a balanced budget amendment is the only way to fix the broken system that created this mess, both addressing our long-term fiscal health and giving Americans long-term peace of mind.
Sincerely,
Todd Rokita
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