Rep. Jodey Arrington grew up in West Texas where there is nothing but miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. When voters elected him to represent them in Washington in 2016, they sent him to a place where there is nothing but deficit spending and debt.
Six years later, Mr. Arrington is chairman of the House Budget Committee. He has made it his mission to find a way to bring Democrats and Republicans together to find a cure for their addiction to spending federal tax dollars and digging the nation deeper into debt.
The 51-year-old Texan is determined to lead the way in Congress in putting the nation’s fiscal house in order for future generations.
“This issue is tattooed on my heart. I am deeply concerned about the bleak, fragile, and rapidly deteriorating fiscal state of affairs in this, the greatest nation in human history.”
Though only in his third term in Congress, Mr. Arrington is uniquely positioned across budgetary affairs. Besides chairing the budget panel, he is also an influential member of the House Ways and Means Committee, which handles tax issues, and the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, which recommends fiscal policies and reforms.
He is trying to climb one of the steepest mountains in Washington. No country in recorded history has ever compiled a national debt of $33.77 trillion, so there is no precedent to guide policymakers in the United States looking for a solution for what some say is a fiscal disaster for the nation.
At the heart of the problem is the mandatory spending that consumes two-thirds of the federal budget each year.
Mr. Arrington said the national debt remains the towering obstacle to the nation’s future prosperity and even survival. At the heart of the problem is the congressional culture epitomized by the familiar maxim that “when all is said and done in Washington, more is said than done.”
That’s true regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans are in the majority, and sooner or later, according to the Texan, members of both parties must either set aside their differences in the national interest or at least agree to split the differences in order to make progress.
“I believe this is the most significant challenge facing our nation in the 21st century, our runaway federal spending and our unsustainable national debt that threatens not only our economy but also our national security, our way of life, our leadership in the world, everything good about America’s influence and our children’s future,” Mr. Arrington said at the hearing.
“I think it’s worth repeating some of the startling statistics that demonstrate just how fragile the situation is and just how bad off we are from a fiscal standpoint. Our 120 percent debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) is the highest level of indebtedness in the history of our country, surpassing World War II—and we’re not at war. We’re in relative peace and prosperity and it’s only going to get worse,” he said.
“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projection for 30 years out puts our indebtedness at twice the size of the largest economy in the world. Our annual deficits have reached almost $2 trillion this past year. CBO projects them to double. We will add $20 trillion if we just keep the policies as they are today.”
And growing all the time are the interest payments that must be paid to avoid the calamity of a national bankruptcy.
“Half of that $20 trillion is for interest expenses alone. And the interest, according to CBO, will triple. It’s almost three-quarters of a trillion dollars this year and it’s projected to be $1 trillion,” Mr. Arrington said. “We will exceed what we spend on national defense on interest on the debt alone.
“If that’s not enough to wake all of us up and give us the sense of urgency, I don’t know what will. No responsible leader can look at the rapid deterioration of our balance sheets, CBO’s projections of these unsustainable deficits, and the long-term unfunded liabilities of our nation, and not feel compelled to intervene and change course. No responsible leader can do that.”
Two recent hearings of the budget panel—on Oct. 15 and Nov. 29—focused on Mr. Arrington’s preferred approach, the appointment of one or maybe two fiscal commissions with the injunction from Congress to recommend whatever is necessary to deal with the problem.
Multiple approaches to such a commission that have bipartisan backing have been introduced in Congress in 2023.
There are differences among the four bills, but all establish commissions containing Members of Congress and outside experts, with each given charters to recommend measures designed to bring federal spending under some form of restraint, along with varying reforms in entitlement programs such as increasing the amount of taxable income subject to Social Security levies.
Among House Democrats, Mr. Peters, who is a member of the budget panel, said he worries that “despite a healthy economy, our country’s deficit is growing.”
“These interest payments crowd out investments like an expanded child tax credit, crowd out investments like making college affordable and expanding apprenticeships, crowd out our ability to ensure the clean energy transition leaves no one behind. Democrats should be very worried about what the ballooning debt and interest payments will mean for current and future investments in our kids.”
Mr. Peters agreed with Mr. Arrington, saying, “Congress’s failure to manage the national debt is not the sole responsibility of one party or one administration.”
“I have actually put down a plan on paper that would extend the life of the Social Security Trust Fund through the year 2100,” Mr. Boyle said. He said he has crafted a bill, along with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, that would resolve the issue “simply by bringing in more revenues from those who make more than $400,000 a year.”
Among the strongest supporters of the commission approach is the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CFRB). Maya MacGuineas, president at the CFRB, said, “Our country is up against incredibly steep fiscal challenges in the years ahead, and what we need now is the kind of thoughtful and earnest leadership so often missing in Washington.”
“A bipartisan fiscal commission would allow serious leaders to put everything on the table—taxes, spending, and our critically important trust funds—and do what’s right for our long-term health,” Ms. MacGuineas told The Epoch Times.
“Commissions don’t make everyone happy, but they can help set us on a better fiscal course. We commend lawmakers who stand up in the name of bipartisanship to enact a fiscal commission.”
But congressional commissions have a checkered history, and Mr. Arrington acknowledged in an interview with The Epoch Times that “it’s not like commissions are novel, but timing in politics is incredibly important.”
“It’s important to identify things in past commissions that worked well and things that were impediments to converting the conversation into real actionable results.”
A key is to require that a commission’s recommendations be considered by the full Congress in an up-or-down vote that can’t be prevented or delayed by congressional leaders or ignored by the president, Mr. Arrington said.
Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, proposes two commissions, plus a “fail-safe” mechanism.
“One of the commissions would be a congressional commission, with members of Congress at the helm, guided by a competent staff and perhaps some outside experts. The other commission would be an independent commission, composed entirely of outside experts, guided by competent staff, and including perhaps some former members of Congress (who do not intend to run for re‐election again, ever).”
If the congressionally based commission were to fail to come up with a solution that gains a bipartisan majority in Congress, then the recommendations of the second, independent commission become law if the president approves them and Congress doesn’t pass a resolution of disapproval within 45 days.
Asked about the Cato proposal, Mr. Arrington said the problem with Congress is “not a list of ideas on how to fix the problem, it’s the political courage to execute on those ideas.”
“I think there is a reality test in making sure we’re all on the same page with the mathematics, with the numbers, debt-to-GDP, interest-to-GDP, all the ways we would measure America’s indebtedness and the projections of the unsustainable debt—we have to agree on those from the outset. That’s the first thing that has to happen,” he told The Epoch Times.
The Texas Republican said: “Having people from the private sector from both sides of the aisle I think will hold us, as members of the House and Senate, honest. Ultimately, Congress has to make the decision and there is no magic pill we can take to give us more political will today than we had yesterday.”
Oklahoma’s Mr. Cole agreed, telling The Epoch Times, “You have to have up here people who are willing to vote for things that are less than perfect, the way they did in 1983.”
Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) said the commission approach could work, but before anything in the annual federal budget can be “addressed effectively, Congress first has to show the political courage to cut the one-third that is discretionary.”
“Well, I think that can be an element that could trigger sanity on the mandatory side but keep in mind you’ve got to be talking about the discretionary side,” Mr. Brecheen told The Epoch Times.
“What many of us agree on is we’ve got to solve the mandatory side, but the problem is if we can’t get somebody to start being the adults in the room on the discretionary side, many of us will say we'll never have the courage to cut on the mandatory side.”
A deep skeptic of commissions is former Senate Budget Committee Chief Economist Bill Beach, who told The Epoch Times: “Congressional commissions often are a ‘run out the clock’ strategy by policymakers: It looks like constructive activity is going on, but the real objective is to get off the court with as little damage as possible.
“What we need are significant reforms to the main drivers of debt, or to mandatory spending, particularly Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.”
Mr. Beach, who was commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics under then-President Donald Trump, added: “Congress spends most of its time on just one-third of the budget. The rest is on autopilot, and that’s the part that is driving up our deficits and on-budget debt.
“Let’s reverse that. Spend most of your time on fixing the broken programs that are robbing America’s youth of their economic and social future.”
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