Cut, Cap, and Balance

Jordan: Reject Blank Check Debt Limit Increase


The Republican Study Committee is gathering signatures for a letter to House Republican leadership specifying a solution to the debt limit impasse: Cut, Cap, and Balance.

1. Cut - We must make discretionary and mandatory spending reductions that would cut the deficit in half next year.

2. Cap - We need statutory, enforceable caps to align federal spending with average revenues at 18% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with automatic spending reductions if the caps are breached.

3. Balance - We must send to the states a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) with strong protections against federal tax increases and a Spending Limitation Amendment (SLA) that aligns spending with average revenues as described above.

With each passing day our nation’s fiscal health gets worse, leaving our children and grandchildren falling further into debt. Democrats seem to have given up, proposing even more borrowing in response to our massive debt addiction. With the problem growing larger every day, we must move quickly and unite behind a plan to cut spending and get our budget into balance.

(1)Americans deserve immediate spending cuts that demonstrate that we are charting a swift path toward a balanced budget. We must implement discretionary and mandatory spending reductions that would cut the deficit in half next year.

(2)To ensure that spending cuts continue, we need statutory, enforceable total-spending caps to reduce federal spending to 18% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with automatic spending reductions if the caps are breached-an approach taken in a bill by Rep. Mack and in another bill by Reps. Kingston, Flake, and Graves.

(3)To fundamentally and permanently reform the way that Washington budgets and spends, we must send to the states a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) with strong protections against federal tax increases and including a Spending Limitation Amendment (SLA) like the statutory spending caps described above. Rep. Joe Walsh has introduced a BBA with a spending limit provision (H.J.Res. 56) that has already earned the support of 47 Republican senators.

Let me at it, I'll sign the damn thing if they won't.