The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

House says ‘yes’ to ‘Cut, Cap, and Balance’ bill

By Doug Carlson - Jul 20, 2011 - 1 -

For months, the White House and congressional leaders have been at an impasse on debt ceiling negotiations. The cycle of talks, however, has begun to show new signs of life, most recently with the resurrection Tuesday of once-dead bipartisan discussions among a so-called “Gang of Six” in the Senate. Details remain fluid and many conservatives skeptical.

But Tuesday evening, even as the media focused on possible Senate deals in the works, a majority in the other legislative body locked in a stalemate with President Obama over a fiscal path forward spoke decisively: cut and cap spending in the near term and constitutionally limit the government’s budget for the long term.

By a 234-190 vote, the House passed the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act (H.R. 2560), a measure that would help to bring sanity to a government that has lost its fiscal way.

To see how your representative voted on the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act, please click here.

The common-sense solution is packaged in three parts:

• Cut spending by $111 billion in the next fiscal year;
• Cap spending as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over the next decade; and
• Require congressional passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment before the debt limit can be raised.

Much credit for the strong vote in favor of the measure is due the many people who took time to contact their representatives and urge support for the plan. Their voices were heard. In an action alert ahead of the House vote, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Richard Land called the bill “critical for our country’s fiscal wellbeing,” adding that it “would help to ensure a solid economic foundation for future generations.”

For weeks, the ERLC and numerous other organizations have rallied behind a Cut, Cap, Balance Pledge, the skeletal basis of H.R. 2560. Many believe it was the impetus for the House measure.

Key to the cut, cap, and balance plan is something long needed: a check on federal spending. Mere promises of spending restraint have proven untrustworthy. For years, elected officials have borrowed and spent with reckless abandon. That must change.

As set forth in the U.S. Constitution, our Founding Fathers wisely constructed government according to a series of checks and balances—three co-equal branches, including a legislative branch broken down into two bodies. Now the need for another check is clear. Our $14.3 trillion national debt—up more than $3.5 trillion in just the last two and a half years—is evidence aplenty that the Constitution should also provide a check on the government’s checkbook. Forty-nine states operate under budget limitations in their laws or state constitutions. Most Americans live by a budget as well. Why shouldn’t Congress be held to such a standard?

A majority in the House demonstrated Tuesday evening they understand that message. Now it’s the Senate’s turn. Yet liberals in the upper chamber have been throwing cold water on the “cut, cap, and balance” measure since its introduction. Alarmingly, some conservatives now seem willing to focus on deals such as the plan emerging from the “Gang of Six” rather than “cut, cap, and balance.” And the White House, meanwhile, is adamantly opposed to the House measure, declaring intent to veto what it has dubbed the “duck, dodge, and dismantle” bill.

If President Obama and the Senate are serious about getting our nation’s fiscal house in order, they will follow the House’s lead by saying yes to the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act. The plan to cut immediate spending, to cap near-term spending at a percentage of the GDP that more closely aligns with historic averages, and to give the states an opportunity to ratify a Balanced Budget Amendment is a deal worth supporting.

To see how your representative voted on the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act, please click here. To contact your senators or the White House to urge them to support the Cup, Cap, and Balance Act, please click here.

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