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I’ll be on a plane today heading back to D.C. for what’s sure to be an exhausting week in Congress. The debt ceiling is going to be one of the bigger issues front & center…

Remember: for the longest time, your elected officials in Washington have spent more money than the government was able to take in. Republicans and Democrats alike have all had a detestable spending problem. There’s NO EXCUSE for this. Year after year, tax revenue hasn’t come close to paying for all this federal spending, so we’ve had to borrow trillions of dollars: over $31 trillion so far.

Sadly, there’s been very little desire in Washington to stop the bleeding. Imagine your own personal financial situation, in your own household. Imagine being in debt up to your eyeballs and every month your credit card balances keep rising. Obviously, you’d look around to see what expenses you could cut. You’d have an honest conversation with your family about ways to reduce spending, right? Cutting spending would be the FIRST thing you’d do!

Well, when it comes to the federal government’s massive and growing debt, there’s NO such desire to have that conversation among Democrat circles. Think of our $31.4 trillion debt ceiling as a spending limit on your credit card. Democrats are essentially saying they want to raise that spending limit without any conditions. A “clean” debt ceiling increase, with no spending reductions, no cuts to unnecessary programs, no effort to reduce spending at all.

Meanwhile, many Republicans are finally starting to admit our debt will destroy this country if we can’t get this problem under control. That’s been my position all along. Remember: one of the “concessions” I fought so hard for during the House Speaker’s election a couple weeks ago was a commitment to put our nation on a trajectory to balance the budget within 10 years. In part, this means that EVERY major piece of financial legislation MUST come with some incremental, responsible spending cuts to keep us moving along a trajectory towards a balanced budget, including this current debt ceiling negotiation.

There’s certainly a lot of easy cuts we can make this early in the process. Things like:

🔴 Rolling back Biden’s terrible $80 billion IRS expansion.

🔴 Ending Biden’s unlawful $400 billion student loan bailout;

🔴 Clawing back ALL unobligated funds that were allocated for Covid but never spent.

🔴 Eliminating billions of wasteful climate change spending in the so-called "Inflation Reduction Act."

We don’t yet know what proposals will rise to the top during this current debt ceiling negotiation, but I’m making this very clear: we MUST get our country's fiscal house in order. And any proposal which does not keep us on a 10-year balanced budget trajectory will absolutely not have my support or vote in Congress.