Senator Rand Paul
295 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Dr. Paul,
On behalf of National Taxpayers Union (NTU), the nation’s oldest taxpayer advocacy organization, we write to express our support for your budget resolution that would codify your “Penny Plan.” This legislation would help get our nation’s fiscal house in order by finally forcing Congress to make the tough decisions needed to move the federal budget into balance. Over the course of five years, this budget resolution would annually cut six pennies off of every dollar projected to be spent by the federal government.
This resolution would give a dose of tough medicine to deal with our nation’s budget ills, but it is medicine our nation needs. The bill does not direct any specific cuts to programs—those decisions would be made later by Congress. This plan also improves the enforcement of budget discipline and scorekeeping, including increasing the threshold for points of order and emergency legislation, as well as limiting the creation of duplicate government programs.
Our nation faces a national debt that now totals over $37 trillion. Interest payments on our debt are now larger than the entire U.S. defense budget. Unless Congress can get the federal budget under control soon, America may soon enter a “debt spiral,” limiting our ability to service our debt without substantial cuts to core federal programs or the imposition of massive tax increases.
You have introduced versions of this bill for almost a decade, with the first one only requiring five years of frozen budgets to achieve balance. Now, to achieve balance in five years, budgets would need to be cut by six cents of every federal dollar. Let’s hope that Congress can pass this resolution before you need to draft a Dime Plan or a Quarter Plan.
NTU urges senators to SUPPORT this pro-taxpayer proposal. Thank you for your leadership on this important legislation and please do not hesitate to contact NTU should you have any questions.
Sincerely,
David Timmons
Senior Policy Manager