Congressman Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (Ga-01) opposed a budget deal negotiated by congressional leaders citing its failure to adequately address the national debt. The measure lifts spending caps first enacted in 2011 by $80 billion, offsets the increased spending with cuts elsewhere and suspends the statutory debt limit through March 2017.
“The national debt is the greatest threat to our national security and threatens to leave our children and grandchildren with a life indebted to China,” said Carter. “There are good and much needed reforms in this deal that I fully support and I applaud those who worked so hard to negotiate it. That said, it falls woefully short when it comes to the kind of structural reforms necessary to prevent Washington’s spending addiction from bankrupting the American Dream.”
Provisions included in the bill would:
lift spending caps enacted in 2011 by $80 billion over the next two years equally divided between defense and non-defense spending;
offset those spending increases with spending cuts and reforms elsewhere;
increase spending in the Overseas Contingency Operations fund by at least $16 billion without offsets;
transfer funding to the Social Security Disability Trust fund to maintain the solvency of the program;
enact structural entitlement reforms to strengthen Social Security such as closing loopholes that allow individuals to obtain larger payments than those intended and require medical review before awarding disability benefits;
equalize payments for Medicare services obtained in outpatient settings in hospitals with those obtained in a doctor’s office;
provide a two-year budget window to provide certainty to defense programs;
eliminate Obamacare’s auto-enrollment mandate; and
suspend the statutory debt limit through March 2017.
