Both President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy have issued statements that they have the outline of an agreement to raise the debt ceiling and implement spending cuts, budget reforms and other compromise fiscal issues between House Republicans and the White House.
NTU Executive Vice President Brandon Arnold issued the following statement, optimistic about the outlook for taxpayers and that the outline of the deal is something that will be supported by NTU:
Decades of fiscal irresponsibility by both parties have left our nation’s finances in an unacceptable condition. It would be unrealistic to expect a single piece of legislation to rectify the mess in its entirety. And indeed, the Fiscal Responsibility Act does not. It is an imperfect bill that ought to do much more to structurally change a dangerous fiscal trajectory.
At the same time, it represents a critical step toward getting our nation back on track. Congress should pass this bill immediately and send it to the president’s desk. There are many features of the bill worthy of strong support – six years of budget caps, a clawback of unused COVID dollars, a regulatory budget, and restarting student loan payments, to name a few. There is much more work to be done and legislative text still to come, but Congress should recognize that there is no silver bullet to fix it all. Barring any unexpected developments from agreement to actual legislation, the Fiscal Responsibility Act is worthy of passage and Congress should quickly begin work on other important bills to fix our fiscal mess.
For more information on the budget deal or to talk to an NTU legislative and budget expert, contact NTU Vice President of Communications Kevin Glass at 703-299-8670 or at kglass@ntu.org.